Article by S. Duranti in no. 35/2024 of Nautilus magazine
Despite the fact that young people represent a relatively scarce resource in our country, still today many of them remain excluded from educational, training and work circuits. They are called NEET, an acronym from the English Not in Education, Employment or Training, and according to the latest Istat data in Tuscany they number about 55 thousand, or 11 percent of young people between 15 and 29 years old, a percentage that rises to 16 percent for Italy.
In the public debate, NEETs are often portrayed as “laid-back,” unmotivated and disinterested young people, but the phenomenon is much broader and more varied: it ranges from the recent graduate or recent high school graduate who is actively looking for a job in line with his or her expectations, to the young person who left school early, who lacks the skills needed to enter the labor market and is at risk of marginalization. But among NEETs we also find people who do not work by choice, for example to devote themselves to their families, or those who live from odd jobs, placing themselves in the gray area between precariousness and unemployment.
