Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK: August 2024

• Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates have been weighted to population estimates published in November 2023 for periods from July to September 2022; a discontinuity has been introduced at this point, so comparisons before this point are not possible.
• Increased volatility of LFS estimates, resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes, means that estimates of quarterly change should be treated with additional caution.
• There was an increase in the number of young people aged 16 to 24 years not in education, employment or training (NEET) in April to June 2024, with the total currently estimated to be 872,000, up from 798,000 in April to June 2023.
• The percentage of all young people who were NEET in April to June 2024 was estimated at 12.2%, up 0.9 percentage points on the year.
• The increase in the number of young people who were NEET was driven by young men, who saw an increase of 69,000 on the year to 493,000.
• The number of young people who were NEET and unemployed in April to June 2024 was estimated to be 332,000, a decrease of 1,000 on the year.
• The number of young men aged 16 to 24 years who were NEET and unemployed decreased by 24,000 on the year to 213,000.
• There were an estimated 540,000 young people in the UK who were NEET and economically inactive, an increase on the year of 75,000.

An estimated 12.2% of all people aged 16 to 24 years in the UK were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in April to June 2024. This is up 0.9 percentage points compared with April to June 2023, and down 0.4 percentage points on the previous quarter.

An estimated 13.5% of young men (up 1.7 percentage points on the year) and 10.8% of young women (largely unchanged on the year) were NEET. There were 872,000 young people who were NEET in total, an increase of 74,000 on the year. This increase was driven by young men. Of the total number of young people who were NEET, 493,000 were young men and 379,000 were young women.

The total number of people aged 18 to 24 years who were NEET was 807,000, up 65,000 on the previous year.

The percentage of those aged 18 to 24 years who were NEET was 14.5%, which was up 1.1 percentage points on the year, and down 0.4 percentage points on the quarter.

Unemployed young people who were not in education, employment or training

There were an estimated 332,000 NEET young people aged 16 to 24 years who were unemployed in April to June 2024, down 1,000 from April to June 2023 and up 13,000 from January to March 2024. An estimated 213,000 of these unemployed NEETS were young men, and 120,000 were young women. The number of NEET men aged 16 to 24 years who were unemployed decreased by 24,000 on the year from April to June 2023, while the number of NEET women aged 16 to 24 years who were unemployed increased by 23,000 on the year.

Economically inactive young people who were not in education, employment or training

In April to June 2024, there were an estimated 540,000 economically inactive young people aged 16 to 24 years who were NEET. This was up 75,000 on the year from April to June 2023, and down 40,000 on the quarter from January to March 2024. The number of young men who were NEET and economically inactive was 280,000 and the corresponding number of young women was 260,000. The total increase of 75,000 on the year was driven by young men, who saw an increase of 93,000 on the year from April to June 2023, while young women aged 16 to 24 years who were NEET and economically inactive decreased by 18,000 on the year.

Subnational not in education, employment or training (NEET) estimates

Subnational estimates for people not in education, employment or training are not published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but can be accessed through the links in Section 6: Related links.

Young people

For this release, young people are defined as those aged 16 to 24 years. Estimates are also produced for the age groups 16 to 17 years and 18 to 24 years by sex, and separately for the age groups 18 to 20 years, 21 to 22 years and 23 to 24 years.

Education and training

People are considered to be in education or training if they:

• are enrolled on an education course and are still attending or waiting for term to start or restart
• are doing an apprenticeship
• are on a government-supported employment or training programme
• are working or studying towards a qualification
• have had job-related training or education in the last four weeks

Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)

Anybody who is not in any of the forms of education or training listed previously and not in employment is considered to be NEET. As a result, a person identified as NEET will always be either unemployed or economically inactive.

Economic inactivity

People not in the labour force (also known as economically inactive) are not in employment, but do not meet the internationally accepted definition of unemployment because they have not been seeking work within the last four weeks and/or they are unable to start work in the next two weeks.

Employment

Employment measures the number of people in paid work, or those who had a job that they were temporarily away from (for example, because they were on holiday or off sick). This differs from the number of jobs because some people have more than one job.

Unemployment

Unemployment measures people without a job who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks.

A more detailed glossary is available in our guide to labour market statistics.

This statistical bulletin contains estimates for young people who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the UK. The bulletin is published quarterly in February or March, May, August and November. All estimates discussed in this statistical bulletin are for the UK and are seasonally adjusted.

Statistics in this bulletin are used to help monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Explore the UK data on our SDGs reporting platform.

Our NEET methodological article providing background information explains how missing information for identifying someone as NEET is appropriated based on individual characteristics.

Official statistics in development

These statistics are labelled as "official statistics in development". Until September 2023, these were called "experimental statistics". Read more about the change in our guide to official statistics in development.

These statistics are based on information from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The reweighting exercise has improved the representativeness of our LFS estimates for periods from July to September 2022, reducing potential bias in our estimates. Nonetheless, the ongoing challenges with response rates and levels mean that LFS-based labour market statistics are now badged as official statistics in development until further review. This is also in line with the letter from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), stating that LFS statistics should not be published as accredited official statistics until OSR has reviewed them. We would advise caution when interpreting short-term changes in headline LFS rates and recommend using them as part of our suite of labour market indicators alongside Workforce Jobs, claimant count data and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.

We are transforming how we collect and produce the LFS data to improve the quality of these statistics. We have published a Labour market transformation article providing an update on the transformation of labour market statistics. As stated in the article, we are planning a further reweighting exercise, based on the population projections published in January 2024. We plan to introduce the reweighted LFS series into our labour market publication by the end of 2024.

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our LFS Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report.

The LFS performance and quality monitoring reports provide data on response rates and other quality-related issues for the LFS.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is responsible for NEET statistics for the UK, published within this release. Estimates of the number of young people who are NEET within the countries of the UK and for subnational areas are the responsibility of the Department for Education for England, and the devolved administrations for each of the other countries. There is further information on the availability of subnational estimates of young people who are NEET in Section 6: Related links.

Coronavirus

View more information on how labour market data sources are affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

View a comparison of our labour market data sources and the main differences.

Relationship to other labour market statistics for young people

Our monthly Labour market statistical bulletin includes the dataset A06: Educational status and labour market status for people aged from 16 to 24. The NEET statistics and the dataset A06 statistics are both derived from the LFS and use the same labour market statuses; however, the educational statuses are derived differently.

For dataset A06, the educational status is based on participation in full-time education only. For NEET statistics, the educational status is based on any form of education or training. Therefore, the dataset A06 category "not in full-time education" includes some people who are in part-time education and/or some form of training and who, consequently, should not be regarded as NEET.

Making our published spreadsheets accessible

Following the Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidance on releasing statistics in spreadsheets, we will be amending our published tables over the coming months to improve usability, accessibility and machine readability of our published statistics. To help users change to the new formats we will be publishing sample versions of a selection of our tables and, where practical, initially publish the tables in both the new and current formats. If you have any questions or comments, please email labour.market@ons.gov.uk.

Strengths and limitations

The figures in this bulletin come from the LFS. Results from sample surveys are always estimates and not precise figures. As the number of people available in the sample gets smaller, the variability of the estimates that we can make from that sample size gets larger. In general, changes in the numbers and rates reported in this bulletin between three-month periods are small and are not usually greater than can be explained by sampling variability.

Our Sampling variability dataset shows sampling variabilities for estimates of young people who are NEET derived from the LFS.