Tim Worstall

Neets

My apologies, but I really do not believe this number at all:

The percentage of 16- to 24-year-olds classed as unemployed in 2005 in
England was nine per cent, but the percentage classed as Neets was
twice as high. Germany has a rate of only 4.6 per cent and France only
3.4 per cent.

The French rate for youths not in employment, education or training is 3.4 %? Err, given that the French youth unemployment rate is:

France has one of Europe’s highest youth unemployment
rates. More than 20% of its 18 to 25-year-olds are unemployed – double
the national average of 9.6%.

I find that a fairly difficult number to believe. Germany’s not much better:

Almost a quarter of those under 25 are unemployed, one of the highest
youth unemployment rates in Europe. But the problem isn’t just limited
to France — youth unemployment has reached record levels all over
Europe. For its part, Germany has fared somewhat better, with a total
youth unemployment rate of 15 percent, putting it at 16th place
worldwide.

It obviously requires a greater mind than mine to resolve this conundrum so until it is explained I think I’ll just reject the rest of what the report has to say. Those in education and training are not counted as unemployed of course (otherwise, with nearly 50% of youths now doing a university course, we would have a youth unemployment rate of near 50% as well). So I really don’t get how our number of neets can be twice the youth unemployment rate while that in France is one fifth of theirs.

Any ideas anyone?

In

6 responses

  1. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    I can’t answer your questions, but remember an unemployment rate is no. unemployed / total workforce, and a high % can be affected by a very low total workforce. For example if 1mn 18 to 24 yr olds are in the workforce, and 100,000 unemployed, that’s 10%. If 200,000 of the workforce move into education, from those who were employed, it’s now 100,000/800,000, or 12.5%.

    Reply
  2. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    There’s a definition here of sorts.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

    Reply
  3. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    I’ve maintained a continuing interest in this issue over successive decades and recall a piece in The Economist nearly 25 years back (sorry no link) which reported that Britain from the 1950s through to the early 1980s had one of the highest drop out rates in western Europe from education and training at the minimum school leaving age. It was a recurring concern in publications of the old Manpower Services Commission in the 1970s during the Callaghan government.
    All credit to David Miliband for not trying to con us into believing that we are a well-educated nation now. When he was school standards minister back in 2002, he described as “a national shame” the numbers of teenagers who drop out of education when it ceases to be compulsory at the age of 16 and said he was appalled by the UK’s low ranking in comparisons produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2238424.stm
    “One third of employers have to give their staff remedial lessons in basic English and maths, a survey suggests. Managers said staff needed to be able to use correct spelling and grammar and should be competent in simple mental arithmetic without a calculator. One in five employers said non-graduate recruits of all ages struggled with literacy or numeracy, the Confederation of British Industry poll found.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5263812.stm
    “Academics have challenged ministers’ claims of improved pupil performance in national tests and GCSEs.
    “Government research obtained by The TES compares the results of pupils in England with teenagers in other countries. The findings weaken ministers’ claims that pupils are getting better at English, maths and science. . . The analysis found evidence that pupils who had achieved average results in key stage 3 tests in English, maths and science and GCSEs performed worse in the 2003 tests than those in 2000.”
    Times Educational Supplement 18 August 2006
    http://www.tes.co.uk/2270700

    Reply
  4. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    [continued]
    “Last year [2004], a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that Britain came seventh from bottom in a league table of staying-on rates for 19 countries. Only Mexico and Turkey had significantly lower rates of participation for this age group. Italy, New Zealand, Portugal and Slovakia have marginally lower rates.”
    http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,16086,1555547,00.html
    Unsurprisingly, an accessible piece in The Economist for 26 August 2006 showed that Britain is unusually well-endowed with low-skilled young people compared with other European countries:
    http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7843638
    All the evidence shows that this problem has been with us for so long and has persisted over such huge changes in prevailing economic conditions over the post-war period that I have serious difficulty in believing the root causes are mainly economic. Deeply embedded cultural values are resilient to the pressures of changing social conditions. As mentioned often before, I’m inclined to think the insight in Geroge Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) still holds true:
    “The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.”
    http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

    Reply
  5. rv Avatar
    rv

    I made a programme about Neets once and we went to Barking, which according to the figures was the Neet capital of Britain.
    We went to project after project searching for Neets and didn’t find any who weren’t teen mums. I’m not saying they didn’t exist but all the projects aiming to reach them with their DJ facilities and football games missed them.
    They were all doing “college courses”. Partly because of the Education Maintenance Allowance which seemed to brilliantly focus the teenage mind by paying them to turn up to every lesson. If they introduced it for under 16s it might really change education.
    We ended up finding some in the hoods of Bournemouth.

    Reply
  6. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    If the statistic is correct (big IF), then there must be a lot of NEETS who are not counted as unemployed.
    Nulab would have us believe that only people on Jobseeker’s Allowance are truly unemployed and cheerfully ignore people on Income Support (single mums) and on Incapacity Benefit (unemployed but know how to fake back ache).
    Given that over three quarters of benefit claimants are on IS or IB (not on JSA) then maybe that’s your answer.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Tim Worstall

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading