On 20 May the International Labor Organization (ILO) released their Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013 report which outlines the employment environment for people aged 15 to 29 in nations around the world.

Among the statistic were NEET rates among 34 OECD countries’ young people. A NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) rate is the percentage of youth who are not working or in school of any kind.

On average, 15.8 percent of tens and young adults fall in this category in developed countries. The following is a full list of the studied countries.

1 – Luxembourg (7.1%)
2 – Netherlands (7.2%)
3 – Norway (8.5%)
4 – Slovenia (8.8%)
5 – Switzerland (9.7%)
6 – Japan (9.9%)
7 – Iceland (10.3%)
8 – Sweden (10.3%)
9 – Denmark (10.5%)
10 – Austria (11.1%)
11 – Australia (11.8%)
12 – Germany (12%)
13 – Finland (12.6%)
14 – Czech Rep. (13.2%)
15 – Canada (13.5%)
16 – Portugal (13.5%)
17 – Belgium (14.2%)
18 – Poland (15.2%)
OECD average = 15.8
19 – United Kingdom (15.9%)
20 – United States (16.1%)
21 – New Zealand (16.3%)
22 – France (16.7%)
23 – Greece (18.3%)
24 – Slovakia (18.8%)
25 – Hungary (18.9%)
26 – Estonia (19.1%)
27 – Republic of Korea (19.2%)
28 – Brazil (19.6%)
29 – Ireland (21%)
30 – Italy (23%)
31 – Spain (23.7%)
32 – Mexico (24.4%)
33 – Israel (27.4%)
34 – Turkey (36.6%)
[2010 figures]

Upon release of the report South Korean several media outlets wrote headlines such as “One in Five is NEET” or “Our NEET is twice as high as Japan.”

However, these are figures that we should all be equally concerned about. The ILO also mentions that although NEET rates had been dropping steadily since 2009, they are recently on the increase again.

They are also projecting this increase to continue into 2018 causing university graduates more stress and delays in finding a job in an already disheartening market.

Source: Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013 (English), via NicoNico News (Japanese)