“NEET – not in employment, education or training” refers to the youngsters that are not in the educational system, unemployed or do not attend any courses for their advancement in the society. The term NEET is an acronym of a project implemented in several countries around Europe, financed by Erasmus+ programme for mobility aiming to a better integration of NEET youngsters due to an increased cooperation of the youth sector with different institutions on national or local level.

The definition of NEET includes young unemployed individuals that are not attending any training or education so young people that are not active. The NEET group of youngsters is characterized with 4 basic characteristics: gender, education, place of residence and activity. The surveys have shown that the rate of NEET is higher among the youngsters with secondary school than the youngsters with higher education. The environment, place of residence also influence with its conditions so the youngsters living in the cities in Macedonia have less probability to become NEET compared to the youngsters of the rural areas and suburbs. Considering the gender we come up with information that young women are more likely to be unemployed, not included in the education and even do not attend trainings that are completely in the NEET group. Approximately 25.7% of the young male population in Macedonia versus 35.7% females are in the NEET group. Considering the activity of the youngsters the female population is more likely to be inactive and the male NEET youngsters are more to be unemployed. In general, the conclusion is that young females are more likely to become NEET. In Macedonia 4 out of 10 girls are NEET. The factors of risk that also have influence to be NEET are: socio-economical background, the education of the parents, the interest of the parents for an education of the children, the place of residence and the level of the education of the young people. The level of the education is one of the key reasons for becoming a part of the NEET group. The percentage is higher among the youngsters that quitted the education earlier and those who have finished only secondary school. The most common responses are that they are not included at the moment in the educational process because they finished their education but still they are not satisfied. Many of the youngsters replied that the lack of finances is the reason that are not involved in education. Some of the main conclusions are that the youngsters in case of NEET have a good relevant educational program, never been included in trainings, never been employed for to recognize the need of further education and training, they would like to find a job, they know how to get information about education but not trainings, prefer personal contacts and online search to get the information, they know how to use the Internet-have it at home and IT equipment as well, have opportunities to travel but cannot afford the traveling costs and have limited knowledge of the benefits of the info tools.

Due to all this we can conclude that the youngsters have enough qualifications to start working, improve or get back to the education but they are not informed enough.

The youngsters can get informed face to face that turns out to be the most effective, SMS messages, public events and PEER TO PEER-or listening of the experiences of their fellow peers than to be told what it has to be done. There are also ONLINE and OFFLINE methods as well. Online methods are through different forums, websites or email contacts and the offline methods via informal lecturing, youth exchanges, training courses and volunteering in different activities.

David Stoilkovski