Waste of young people

The number of young people who were not in education, employment or training increased in the final quarter of 2014, official figures show.

In the October to December period, there were 963,000 young people (aged from 16 to 24) in the UK who were not in education, employment or training (NEET), an increase of 9,000 on July to September 2014.

More positively, the figure is down 78,000 on the same period a year earlier.

The percentage of all young people in the UK who were NEET was 13.2%, up 0.2 percentage points on July to September 2014, but down 1.0 percentage point from a year earlier.

Just under half (47%) of all young people in the UK who were NEET were looking for work and available for work and therefore classified as unemployed. The remainder were either not looking for work and/or not available for work and therefore classified as economically inactive.

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_395501.pdf