The acronym NEET refers to young people who are neither in employment nor in education and training. The NEET population has its own definitional variations, as official policies switch between counting certain age groups (Furlong, 2006). According to Eurostat (no date b), the term includes young people aged 20–34, who meet two conditions:
- they are not employed — in other words, they are unemployed or economically inactive;
- they are not receiving any (formal or non-formal) education or training.
OECD data (2021) indicates that young people who are NEET are ‘at risk of becoming socially excluded – individuals with income below the poverty-line and lacking the skills to improve their economic situation’.