NEET

NEET (Engl., [ NIT ]) is an acronym of the term N ot in E ducation, e mployment or T raining , not in education, employment or training, and refers to the group of adolescents and young adults who do not attend school , no work pursue and are not in vocational training . The term NEET expands the group of young unemployed (as defined by the ILO ) to include the group of “economically inactive young people”.

In Germany, the Federal Council described the entire group of NEETs in 2016 as follows: “NEETs […] represent a heterogeneous group and can be divided into two broad categories: unemployed [ie registered as unemployed] NEETs actively seek a job, while inactive NEETs not looking for work. Your inactivity can be due to numerous factors, including family responsibilities and health problems, but also discouragement and a lack of motivation to register as unemployed. "

Concept history

The concept of NEETs was developed in the UK. The term was first used since the 1990s instead of “Status ZerO”, which denoted the lack of any status. The Status ZerO concept was applied to 16- and 17-year-olds who were not entitled to unemployment benefits because they were still minors but who did not have access to youth employment programs.

When New Labor came to power in 1997, they focused their labor market and social policy on their “From welfare to work” plan. This included the group of 16 to 18 year olds who were at risk of social exclusion during this period. The NEETs in this group were asked to be proactive and take responsibility for getting out of this predicament. A kind of defiance was imputed to them. This should be broken through the "call [sic!] To the poor and marginalized to take their 'place' at the lower end of the labor market" (ie in the low-wage sector ). New Labor pursued (like Agenda 2010 in Germany) the concept of promoting and demanding . Although the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary the term NEET by saying, declared "a name for people aged 16 to 24 who have finished Their education and are unemployed," said British statistics on youth NEETs continue to focus on the 16- to 18- Year olds. In the 21st century it became common in the European Union to include 19- to 24-year-olds, later even 25- to 29-year-olds, in the crowd of young NEETs.

Valentina Cuzzocrea, reporting to officials from the authorities, tended to see the problems with young people rather than the problems of young people. NEET is an "unbalanced concept [which] unduly and often misleadingly disrupts voluntarism"; H. emphasize the approach that young people with problems lack the will to solve them on their own responsibility.

From 1999 the term NEET became the subject of scientific research. As a result, the negative connotations that originally attached to the term decreased significantly. This was mainly due to the fact that the insight prevailed that the entire NEET group consists of completely different people with completely different life situations and mentalities, who are only linked by the characteristic of being relatively young. So have z. For example, the situational constraints to which a single young mother is subjected or the lack of employability of cognitively impaired young adults have little to do with the situation of resigned, drug-addicted and criminal young long-term unemployed people.

The term NEET is increasingly used in education statistics around the world. Together with the term youth unemployment , it is intended to capture the social situation especially of those young people who are at risk of permanent social exclusion . On June 17, 2011, the European Council asked the EU Member States to intervene swiftly to promote youth employment against underemployment of young people and to submit “NEETs, including early school leavers, training, retraining or activation offers” at the height of youth unemployment in the year In 2013, reducing the number of NEETs was declared to be the central objective of the European Union, which should be achieved through the youth guarantee instrument . The central importance of achieving this goal has been reaffirmed in the framework of the EU's Europe 2020 growth strategy.

In the Spanish-speaking world, there is also the expression Nini or Ni-ni ('neither ... nor', referring to Ni trabaja, ni estudia, ni recibe formación ).

Subgroups of NEETs

In 2012, Eurofound distinguished five subgroups of NEETs:

• “The conventionally employed;
• those who are not available to the labor market (ie young carers, the sick and the disabled);
• the uninvolved (including discouraged unemployed and other young people who have dangerous or antisocial lifestyles);
• the opportunity seeker;
• and the voluntary NEETs: 'those young people who travel and those who are constructively involved in other areas, e.g. B. Art, Music and Self-Didactic Learning '".

When NEETs are talked about condescendingly, they usually refer to members of the third subgroup, but occasionally also those of the fourth and fifth subgroups (depending on the degree of understanding of demanding and non-mainstream life concepts of young people).

Causes of NEET status in young people

In Europe, the term NEET includes all adolescents (up to 17 years old) and young adults (in most cases up to 24 years old) who do not attend school, do not have any work and are not in vocational training. In contrast to Japan, this definition also includes those who were able to register as unemployed and have actually registered as unemployed, and not only those to whom the above definition applies but who are currently not officially registered as unemployed.

Some NEETs can not be registered as unemployed because they cannot be placed in a regular job (as an unskilled worker). This applies not only to young disabled people , but also, for example, to very young mothers who cannot find reliable and needs-based substitute care for their child / children during the planned working hours.

What needs to be clarified below is why young people do not register as unemployed. The article youth unemployment investigates the question of why there are relatively many unemployed young people .

Complex "Lack of employability"

The core of the “not employable” young people include people whose cognitive abilities are below the level that one can expect to successfully pass a training course, especially a theoretical examination. People who have been certified as “totally incapacitated” are generally considered to be “not available for the labor market”. Workshops for disabled people have been set up in Germany for the cognitively and mentally impaired among these people .

Complex "refusal to accept any job offered"

A group of NEETs consists of young people who do not register as unemployed because they expect to soon be confronted by the labor authority with the offer of jobs that they consider “unreasonable”. A refusal to reject any legal work that is officially defined as “ reasonable ” would make any entitlement to wage replacement benefits initially limited and, in the event of repetition, permanently extinguished. NEETs are in a similar situation who register as unemployed but reserve the right to refuse certain job offers despite the impending sanctions.

Such NEETs usually assume that they have a right not to have to accept any work that they consider “unreasonable”.

Other manifestations of rejection of permanent employment

Freeters are also in the age group of “young people” in the sense of the ILO definition; they avoid permanent employment and constantly take on changing odd jobs.

In Japanese one speaks of Hikikomori as young adults who cut themselves off from society and allow themselves to be financed and cared for by their parents, also the term parasitic single is mentioned.

If it is a matter of a prosperity phenomenon, such people (also with a positive connotation) are called private individuals . Less benevolent people speak of “job: son / daughter”.

Individual states

Germany

There are only a few NEETs among minors in Germany. Because young people in Germany have not been and will not be allowed to work full-time as unskilled workers as long as they have not completed their twelve-year vocational schooling. Minors in Germany must, if they did not start school at the age of five and are 17 years old, either continue to attend a general full-time school, start a training position or take part in a measure in the transition system. You will not be registered as unemployed, but rather as looking for a training place. As soon as young adults can be placed on the general labor market, the rejection of the offer of a "reasonable" job is punished by the reduction, and ultimately the withdrawal of wage replacement benefits. This measure also leads to a reduction in the number of NEETs in Germany.

The word creation one-euro job shows what kind of calculation politicians (not only young) assume unemployed and inactive. One euro per hour more than for a wage replacement benefit at Hartz IV level would be received in Germany (according to the method of calculation of the concept creators) who does not succeed in asserting his right to continued payment of the previously received wage replacement benefit. In fact, anyone who, as a young, healthy person without care obligations, would refuse the job offered would be confronted with the above sanctions. In reality, the alternative for him is to receive 0 € or the offered wage. Apart from that, the term one-euro job disguises the fact that the labor costs for the employer and the state are significantly more than € 1 per hour worked.

A young adult in Germany can legally escape the situational pressure of having to take on poorly paid work at short notice if he is not dependent on state wage replacement benefits (e.g. because his parents want and can support him financially as an adult). The alternative to this (apart from illegal methods of securing one's own livelihood) is to invest in one's own human capital in the form of training .

At the Werkstättentag 2016 in Chemnitz , Peter Masuch , President of the Federal Social Court , confirmed that the “Demand and Support” concept still applied in the 2010s : “While [...] people without disabilities can and do help themselves because of the subordinate status of social assistance must, people with disabilities need the support of their fellow human beings and society. ”The background to his statement is the right of people with disabilities to participate in working life guaranteed by Article 27 of the UN Disability Rights Convention. Masuch apparently wants to keep the group of people who can legally invoke the Convention within limits by referring to their duty of personal responsibility to " merely disadvantaged " or "impaired" people who are not affected by a sufficiently serious disability.

Austria

Austria is considered exemplary in terms of youth unemployment in Europe, even after the economic and financial crisis since 2007, the unemployment rate has been below 4% (2011: 4.2% or 6.7% according to Austrian calculations). A recent survey by the Institute for Sociology at the University of Linz in collaboration with the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor found around 75,000 NEET young people between the ages of 16 and 24 for Austria, that is 8.2% of the age group. This study was the first to collect detailed figures on this previously neglected factor.

The NEET figures are low in Tyrol, Upper Austria and Salzburg (around 7.5% in total), high in Vorarlberg (9.2%) and Vienna (11.1%).

Two special risk groups are identified under this group:

• Women, with an average of just under 9% - among men it is 7.5%. According to the study, one possible reason is "that male young people find easier access to apprenticeships or more often take on auxiliary jobs at a young age and thus fall out of this indicator".
• Young people of the first migrant generation belong to 18.8% (almost a fifth of this group), to 11.7% of those born in Austria - young people without a migration background: 6.5%, the risk of exclusion of the first generation is almost three times as high high.

Migrant women therefore face a significantly higher risk overall: a quarter (almost 24%) of 16 to 24-year-old women of the first generation are affected by the NEET phenomenon (men: 13.5%). Therefore, the result of the study in Austria is primarily seen as “an integration issue ”.

However, the extent to which they are long-term dropouts - i.e. either real dropouts or returners to adult education - or only a short-term drop-out from the educational path (in the sense of a sabbatical ) was not determined in detail: The rate of Austrians without educational qualifications (also professionally, that is, only with compulsory education ), ie the formal low skilled (education ISCED  2 / 3C) in Austria is 20%. This also includes those who have been trained in -house or who are highly qualified self-employed who have developed their own professional profile.

In a more recent comprehensive study by the ISW-Linz ( ISW ), the Institute for Sociology of the JKU ( University of Linz ) and the Institute for Vocational and Adult Education Research (IBE), the causes were quantitatively and qualitatively examined after an international literature review. Measures were developed together with practitioners. A homepage was set up for the exchange of ideas.

Japan

NEETs are roughly divided into two groups in Japan:

• Some of the people are not considered to be looking for a job, but indicate that they are principally interested in taking up gainful employment.
• The other part confesses that they will not seek employment in the long term.

According to this definition, those who have registered as job seekers (and are included in the unemployment statistics), contrary to the practice in Europe, are not considered NEETs .

Types of Japanese NEETs

Reiko Kosugi, deputy head of the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training , distinguishes four different types of NEETs, namely

• the anti-social and hedonistic type who simply find it more convenient not to work,
• the withdrawn type who is unable to integrate into society and therefore isolates themselves,
• the paralyzed type who is forced into passivity by too much thought and is therefore unable to find a job, as well
• the disenchanted type who already has work experience and does not wish to have any work experience based on this experience.

Development of NEET numbers in Japan

After an increase in the NEET numbers in Japan around the turn of the millennium, the group of NEETs, limited here to young people aged 15 to 34, has been relatively stable since then around 640,000 people (statistics from 2008), i.e. around 0.5 % of the Japanese population. The Japanese government considers this to be socially and economically highly problematic and has therefore been investing in various, sometimes preventive, support measures since 2003 in order to reduce the number of NEETs.

Causes of Refusal by Young People in Japan

In Japan, the following are cited as reasons for a pronounced refusal of behavior among young people:

• Causes at the macro level: A change in values in Japanese society is seen as one of the reasons for the emergence of NEETs : In contrast to earlier generations, today's young adults are no longer willing to accept and carry out every work assigned to them without contradiction, but rather they decide even whether a job corresponds to your personal ideas and requirements. This group of people is therefore not unwilling to take up any form of work. But also the inflexible employment system and the shyness, deeply rooted in the Japanese population, of taking problems to the outside world and seeking help, promote the emergence of NEETs, which are repeatedly noticed by rejecting work opportunities.
• Causes at the micro-level and meso-level: Apart from that, a person's individual decision to develop into a NEET (i.e. a person who is not ready to accept any job offered) is favored by various factors such as
  • Personality traits , especially irritability, hypersensitivity, inability to adapt to new situations and shyness, these traits beingcausedespecially in untreated AD (H) D ,
  • family reasons such as the parents' inability to adequately support their child or divorce / loss of a parent,
  • school-related reasons , for example bullying, excessive demands and pressure regarding school performance, no support for difficulties in school, or
  • work-related reasons , in particular dissatisfaction with the chosen occupation and the treatment by superiors, long working hours and downsizing in the company.

Freeters and NEETs in Japanese Literature

In Japanese precarious literature , the subject of NEETs is increasingly taken up in addition to Freetern (see Freeter literature ) and Hikikomori . Examples from the light novel / manga literature or the anime are Higashi no Eden , NHK ni Yōkoso! , No Game No Life or Kami-sama no Memo-chō .

Web links

• Valentina Cuzzocrea: Future vision for the NEET category . Council of Europe (coe.int). 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eurostat : Glossary: ​​Inactive young people who do not participate in education or further training (NEET) . January 16, 2019, accessed July 12, 2020
2. ↑ Austrian Federal Chancellery: United Nations . Retrieved July 13, 2020
3. ↑ Stefan Sell : How is unemployment measured? . Federal Agency for Political Education . February 21, 2020, accessed August 12, 2020
4. ^ Austrian Federal Ministry for Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection: Summary. Section “Typology of NEET Youngsters” . Retrieved August 12, 2020
5. ↑ Bundesrat: Information from the European Commission (Printed matter 610 / 1613.10.16). P. 9 . October 13, 2016, accessed August 13, 2020
6. ↑ Valentina Cuzzocrea: Future vision for the NEET category . Council of Europe (coe.int). 2013. p. 5, accessed on July 13, 2020
7. ↑ Cambridge Dictionary: Article "NEET" . Retrieved August 12, 2020
8. ↑ Statistics: NEET and participation . gov.uk (UK Government). 2020. Accessed August 12, 2020
9. ↑ Europe's youth are unemployed: Who are the NEETs? . jugendpolitikineuropa.de. July 20, 2016, accessed August 12, 2020
10. ↑ Valentina Cuzzocrea: Future vision for the NEET category . Council of Europe (coe.int). 2013. p. 6, accessed on July 13, 2020
11. ↑ European Council: Council recommendation of April 22, 2013 on the introduction of a youth guarantee (2013 / C 120/01) . April 26, 2013, accessed August 12, 2020
12. ↑ Eurofound : NEETs - Young people not in employment, education or training: characteristics, costs and policy responses in Europe . Publications Office of the European Union. Luxembourg. 2012, p. 21, accessed on July 13, 2020
13. ↑ Eurofound: NEETs - Young people not in employment, education or training: characteristics, costs and policy responses in Europe . Publications Office of the European Union. Luxembourg. 2012, p. 12, accessed on July 13, 2020
14. ↑ Brigitte Scheels: NEET and socially disadvantaged young people in the transition to working life: concepts, findings, discussions . springer.com. 2015. p. 15 (Fig. 1) accessed on July 15, 2020
15. ↑ Peter Masuch : What did the UN-CRPD bring for better participation in working life? Speech given at the Werkstättentag in Chemnitz on September 21, 2016 . P. 7 f., Accessed on July 14, 2020
16. ↑ Here the term is used in the traditional sense, according to which, for example, someone who has broken a foot is "impaired", but presumably only temporarily, in contrast to disabled people who have nevertheless often been referred to as "impaired" for some time become.
17. ↑ calculations based on recent Mikrozsensus of Statistics Austria , 2012, see micro-census from 2004 , statistik.at
18. ↑ ^{a b} young people without training or job. (No longer available online.) In: Our positions »Working world» Labor market policy . Chamber of Labor Upper Austria, February 27, 2012, archived from the original on March 11, 2012 ; Retrieved March 13, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
19. ↑ Every fifth young migrant without training or job. In: DiePresse.com. Retrieved March 13, 2012 . 
20. ↑ compare young people neither in education, employment nor training (NEET) (share in% of 16-24 year-olds, average for the years 2008–2010)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   , Graphic (pdf; 266 kB), beruferkammer.com
21. ^ Quote in DiePresse.com
22. ^ State Secretary for Integration Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP), quoted in DiePresse.com
23. ↑ Yuji Genda: Jobless Youths and the NEET problem in Japan . In: Social Science Japan Journal , Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 23–40 ( abstract , en, The Author 2007 / Oxford University Press)
24. ↑ Foreign Press Center Japan: 850,000 Young People Unrelated to Work , Japan Brief, April 8, 2005 (de)
25. ^ The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare: Employment measures in Post-Financial Crisis Japan. July 2009 ( pdf , mhlw.go.jp, en).
26. ^ The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare: Creating working opportunities and enabling environment for young people. Country Report for the Symposium on Globalization and the Future of Youth in Asia, 2 and 3 December 2004, Tokyo, ( pdf , mhlw.go.jp, en).
27. ↑ Japan's Generation Y - a youth without dreams? Report by Isabella Arcucci. Bayerischer Rundfunk, April 11 2015 ( Podcast ( Memento of the original of 22 July 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link is automatically inserted and not yet tested Please review the original and archive link under. Instructions and then remove this notice. Stand. : April 14, 2015) 
28. ↑ René Haak, Ulrike Maria Haak: Working Worlds in Japan: Values ​​in Transition, Structures in Transition. An introduction. Script undated ( pdf , dijtokyo.org).
29. ↑ Khondaker Mizanur Rahman: NEETs' Challenge to Japan: Causes and Remedies. Script undated ( pdf , dijtokyo.org).