Italy’s ‘Neet’ rate is way above OECD average

Sir, John Morley (Letters, January 6) is right to say that any measure of Italian youth joblessness must strip out those in education. But he is wrong that the best metric is the ratio of young unemployed to the total number of 15-24 year-olds, which gives a surprisingly low figure of 10.1 per cent. This measure does not count inactive young people who are not on unemployment rolls — of which there are many, since Italian benefits for people without payroll contributions are almost non-existent. The best metric is the Italian “Neet” rate, with 21.3 per cent of young people not in employment, education or training, way above the OECD average of 12.6 per cent.

John Springford is a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.