Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET): 2023
Data for young people by age, gender, region and disability for 2023.
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Background
This release summarises the Annual Population Survey (APS) statistics on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in Wales. The definitive source for NEET information is the annual statistical first release (SFR), Participation of young people in education and the labour market, which uses a range of data sources to estimate participation. The latest SFR release provides final estimates for 2021 and provisional estimates for 2022.
APS estimates have become increasingly volatile in recent years and are less statistically robust than the SFR estimates with increasing divergence between the two data sources as indicated in the SFR release. However, the APS allows us to provide more detailed and timely statistics on young people (those aged 16 to 24) who are NEET in Wales which are outlined in this release.
In this latest quarterly update, we have focused on the APS estimates of young people who are NEETs and introduced the additional breakdowns by characteristics.
It should be noted that each of these sources are estimates. Our guide to understanding the different sources of statistics on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in Wales provides further information.
Main points
Figure 1: Young people not in education, employment or training in Wales, year ending December 2004 to December 2023
Description of Figure 1: A line chart showing APS NEET rates for 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 year olds in Wales. Both age groups NEET rates have decreased overall across the last decade, despite fluctuations in each series during this time period.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS.
The NEET rate for people aged 16 to 18 in Wales was 7.4% in the year ending December 2023, down by 1.4 percentage points over the year. Over the longer term, the rate has decreased by 0.9 percentage points over the last five years and by 4.5 percentage points over the last decade.
The NEET rate for people aged 19 to 24 in Wales was 16.3% in the year ending December 2023, up by 2.0 percentage points over the year. Over the longer term, the rate has increased by 0.3 percentage points over the last five years, however it has decreased by 4.1 percentage points over the last decade.
Proportion of young people not in education, employment or training, by characteristic
Due to small sample sizes, when looking at sub-groups it has been necessary to use estimates based on the average of three periods. Such estimates should be used to compare groups or regions only.
Gender
A gender split of the proportion of young people who are NEET is available in the latest SFR release which contains data up to and including the provisional estimates for the 2022 calendar year.
Age
Figure 2: Young people not in education, employment or training in Wales by age, three-year period ending December 2023
Description of Figure 2: A bar chart showing the proportion of young people who were NEET in the three-year period ending December 2023 for each year of age from 16 to 24 years. The proportion of those aged between 21 and 24 is higher than those aged between 16 and 20.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS.
Note [u]: The data item for those aged 16 is based on between 10 and 25 responses and is categorised as being of low quality.
In the three years to December 2023, the proportion of young people that were NEET in Wales was relatively similar for those aged between 17 and 20, however the rate increased for those aged from 21 to 24. Those aged 16 had the lowest NEET rate at 4.6%, whereas those aged 23 had the highest NEET rate at 19.3%.
Region
Figure 3: Young people not in education, employment or training by regions of Wales, three-year period ending December 2023
Description of Figure 3: A bar chart showing that there are small differences in NEET rates between Welsh regions, with the rate being highest in Mid and South West Wales and lowest in South East Wales.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS
In the three-year period ending December 2023, there were small differences in NEET rates between the Welsh regions. The proportion of young people aged 16 to 24 who were NEET varied from 12.0% in South East Wales to 14.5% in Mid and South West Wales.
Disability
The APS, which is the source of data for this release, captures data using the medical definition of disability used in the Equality Act 2010 (“a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term impact on a person’s ability to carry out normal day to day activities”). For further information please see the disability definition.
Figure 4: Young people not in education, employment or training in Wales by disability, three-year period ending December 2023
Description of Figure 4: A bar chart showing the proportion of people aged 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 who are NEET by disability status. Disabled people are more likely to be NEET than people who are not disabled, with the largest proportion of those who are NEET being disabled people aged 19 to 24.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS.
Note [u]: The data item for those aged 16 to 18 who are disabled is based on between 25 and 40 responses and is categorised as being of low quality.
Disabled young people are far more likely to be NEET than young people that are not disabled. This difference is even more pronounced for 19 to 24 year olds compared to 16 to 18 year olds. In the three-year period ending December 2023, the proportion of disabled people who are NEET rises from 19.6% at age 16 to 18 to 38.8% at age 19 to 24.
Ethnicity
The survey asks respondents what they consider to be their ethnic origin. The White category includes White – Welsh/English/Scottish/Northern Ireland/British and any other White background including Gypsy and Irish Travellers.
Figure 5: Young people not in education, employment or training in Wales by ethnicity, three-year period ending December 2023
Description of Figure 5: A bar chart showing that young White people are more likely to be NEET than young Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS
In the three-year period ending December 2023, young White people were more likely to be NEET than young Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people. 13.4% of young White people were estimated to be NEET compared to 9.0% of young Black, Asian and Minority ethnic people.
Definitions
Education and training
For APS based estimates: respondents to the APS who are either:
- currently carrying out an apprenticeship
- currently on a government employment or training scheme
- currently working or studying towards any qualifications
- have undertaken any job-related education or training in the previous 4 weeks
- currently enrolled on any full-time or part-time education course excluding leisure classes and are still attending or waiting for term to (re)start
Employment
From the APS respondents are in employment if they are either:
- employed
- self-employed
- on government employment or training programmes
- an unpaid family worker
Disability
The Welsh Government accepts the social definition of disability, in which it is recognised that barriers in society act to disable people who have impairments or health conditions or who use British Sign Language.
The APS, which is the source of data for this release, captures data using the medical definition of disability used in the Equality Act 2010 (“a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term impact on a person’s ability to carry out normal day to day activities”). Figures within this release are not comparable to those within releases prior to 2015, which reported those reporting DDA current disability or work-limiting disability.
Region
The APS has been used to estimate the proportion of young people who are NEET by region. However, due to smaller sample sizes for single year estimates for those aged 16 to 18, the estimates have been averaged over three rolling years for 16 to 24 year olds. The regions in use are as follows:
North Wales
- Isle of Anglesey
- Gwynedd
- Conwy
- Denbighshire
- Flintshire
- Wrexham
Mid and South West Wales
- Powys
- Ceredigion
- Pembrokeshire
- Carmarthenshire
- Swansea
- Neath Port Talbot
South East Wales
- Bridgend
- Vale of Glamorgan
- Rhondda Cynon Taf
- Merthyr Tydfil
- Caerphilly
- Blaenau Gwent
- Torfaen
- Monmouthshire
- Newport
- Cardiff
Quality information
This release summarises the statistics available from the APS on young people aged 16 to 24 who are NEET in Wales. It is updated quarterly with latest estimates from the APS.
The definitive source for NEET information is the annual SFR, Participation of young people in education and the labour market, which uses a range of data sources to estimate participation
However, the APS allows us to provide more detailed and timely statistics on young people who are NEET in Wales which are outlined in this release.
APS estimates have become increasingly volatile in recent years and are less statistically robust than the SFR estimates with increasing divergence between the two data sources.
Further information on both this APS series and the SFR series on young people who are NEET, as well as NEET estimates from the Careers Wales pupil destinations survey, is provided in our guide to understanding the different sources of statistics on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in Wales.
The SFR data will be used to monitor the National Indicator related to ‘Percentage of people in education, employment or training’ laid under the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015.
Relevance
The statistics are used within the Welsh Government to monitor trends in the level and proportion of young people who are NEET.
The Youth Engagement and Progression Framework was originally published in 2013 and was refreshed in September 2022. The Framework is a systematic mechanism to identify and respond to young people at risk of becoming NEET, who are NEET and/or who are at risk of being homeless. It focuses on young people aged 11 to 18 and is built of 6 core components:
- Early identification
- Brokerage
- Monitoring progression
- Provision
- Employability and employment opportunities
- Accountability
These statistics are of relevance to Stronger, Fairer, Greener Wales: A Plan for Employability and Skills. The technical annex for the strategy refers to the national indicator relating to young people in employment, education and training though this is monitored through the SFR series(see also the Well-being of Future Generations Act section below). These statistics are also part of the evidence base for the Young Persons Guarantee.
Accuracy
The APS is a household survey carried out by the ONS. The survey seeks information on respondents' personal circumstances, including their labour market status and their education and training activity. The APS combines the boosted samples of the LFS and provides rolling four quarter data.
As the data come from a survey, the results are sample-based estimates and are therefore subject to differing degrees of sampling variability, i.e. the true value for any measure lies in a differing range about the estimated value. Approximate 95% confidence intervals have been calculated for the APS estimates of the proportion of young people aged 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 who are NEET in Wales and are included in the web tables published alongside this release. The chart below shows the main APS NEET time series for 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 year olds with 95% confidence intervals included.
Figure 6: Estimates of young people not in education, employment or training in Wales, with 95% confidence intervals, year ending December 2004 to 2023
Description of Figure 6: A line chart showing APS estimates of young people who are NEET in Wales with 95% confidence intervals shown as shaded areas. Since 2020, the confidence intervals are slightly wider for both 16 to 18 year olds and 19 to 24 year olds following the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the survey.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the APS
These have been calculated assuming a simple weighted random sample and do not take into account the design of the sample and thus only provide an indication of the confidence interval. Additionally, the adjustment method for apportioning missing values creates an artificial aggregated sample size used in the calculation of confidence intervals. The sampling variability increases as the detail in the data increases and therefore for the 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 age groups, of interest in this bulletin, estimates for sub-groups and regions are based on three period averages.
Further information about the quality of the Annual Population Survey (ONS)
The ONS has recalibrated the weights of APS datasets for periods covering the year ending 2020 quarter 1 to the year ending 2022 quarter 4. Further information on this reweighting and its impact is available in an article published by the ONS on the Impact of reweighting the Labour Force Survey.
Accessibility and clarity
This statistical release is pre-announced and then published on the Statistics and Research section of the Welsh Government website. The release is published as an accessible format HTML, alongside a spreadsheet available in an open data format (ODS). Both the release and the spreadsheet follow accessibility guidelines.
Comparability and coherence
Figure 7: Young people not in education, employment or training in Wales, 2004 to 2022
Description of Figure 7: A line chart comparing the NEET rates on the SFR basis to the APS basis for both 16 to 18 year olds and 19 to 24 year olds. Both measures show that NEET rates have decreased in 2022 with the SFR showing a higher rate, particularly for 16 to 18 year olds.
Source: Welsh Government analysis of the SFR series and APS series on NEETs
(p): SFR figures for 2022 are provisional.
The method used to define young people who are NEET using the APS is harmonised with an agreed UK methodology of deriving NEET estimates. More information can be found within the paper published by the ONS.
Labour Force Survey/Annual Population Survey
The DfE also publish an annual brief on young people who are NEET which includes NEET rates estimates based on the quarterly LFS. Additionally from May 2013 the ONS has produced UK estimates of young people who are NEET, also based on the quarterly LFS.
The quarterly estimates are not directly comparable with the Welsh APS-only estimates published in this release. A direct comparison for Wales with England and the UK LFS measure is not provided as the sample size for 16 to 18 year olds and 19 to 24 year olds in Wales is not sufficiently large. However, using a similar methodology to that used by the ONS, but using the APS rather than the LFS, we can provide estimates of young people who are NEET across the UK. These estimates are provided in Table 7 of the web tables published alongside this release.
These estimates will differ from the official estimates produced by the DfE and ONS and other relevant departments and should therefore be interpreted with caution. An article explaining the difference between NEET statistics across the UK was published by the ONS, alongside their first publication of UK estimates of young people who are NEET.
National Statistics status
The United Kingdom Statistics Authority has designated these statistics as National Statistics, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
National Statistics status means that official statistics meet the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and public value. All official statistics should comply with all aspects of the Code of Practice for Statistics. They are awarded National Statistics status following an assessment by the UK Statistics Authority’s regulatory arm. The Authority considers whether the statistics meet the highest standards of Code compliance, including the value they add to public decisions and debate. The designation of these statistics as National Statistics was confirmed in July 2012 following a full assessment against the Code of Practice.
Since the latest review by the Office for Statistics Regulation, we have continued to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics, and have made the following improvements:
- Included a number of charts showing long term trends as well as commentary on these trends
- Eliminated un-necessary tables from the release as they are freely available on StatsWales
- Improved coherence of the commentary when comparing the two different series
It is Welsh Government’s responsibility to maintain compliance with the standards expected of National Statistics. If we become concerned about whether these statistics are still meeting the appropriate standards, we will discuss any concerns with the Authority promptly. National Statistics status can be removed at any point when the highest standards are not maintained, and reinstated when standards are restored.
Well-being of Future Generations Act (WFG)
The Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 is about improving the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales. The Act puts in place seven well-being goals for Wales. These are for a more equal, prosperous, resilient, healthier and globally responsible Wales, with cohesive communities and a vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language. Under section (10)(1) of the Act, the Welsh Ministers must (a) publish indicators (“national indicators”) that must be applied for the purpose of measuring progress towards the achievement of the Well-being goals, and (b) lay a copy of the national indicators before the Senedd Cymru. Under section 10(8) of the Well-being of Future Generations Act, where the Welsh Ministers revise the national indicators, they must as soon as reasonably practicable (a) publish the indicators as revised and (b) lay a copy of them before the Senedd. These national indicators were laid before the Senedd in 2021. The indicators laid on 14 December 2021 replace the set laid on 16 March 2016.
The SFR data will be used to monitor the National Indicator related to :
- (22) Percentage of people in education, employment or training, measured for different age groups.
Information on the indicators, along with narratives for each of the well-being goals and associated technical information is available in the Well-being of Wales report.
As a national indicator under the Act they must be referred to in the analyses of local well-being produced by public services boards when they are analysing the state of economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being in their areas.
The Act states national milestones must be set that “…the Welsh Ministers consider would assist in measuring whether progress is being made towards the achievement of the well-being goals.” In doing so Welsh Ministers must specify how we know that a national milestone has been achieved and the time by which it is to be achieved.
National milestones are not performance targets for any individual organisation, but are collective measures of success for Wales.
Indicator 22: percentage of people in education, employment or training, measured for different age groups corresponds to a national milestone:
- At least 90% of 16 to 24 year olds will be in education, employment, or training by 2050
Further information on the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.
The statistics included in this release could also provide supporting narrative to the national indicators and be used by public services boards in relation to their local well-being assessments and local well-being plans.
We want your feedback
We welcome any feedback on any aspect of these statistics which can be provided by email to labourmarket.stats@gov.wales
