Decline in NEETs in Italy: the percentage drops to 13.3% in 2025

MILAN – In ten years, the percentage of young NEETs (who neither study nor work) in Italy has halved: in 2025 it stood at 13.3%, when in 2015 it was 25.7% and in 2024 at 15.3%. This is what emerges from the research 'The Neet condition. Data, causes and policies of a declining phenomenon', created by Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondazione Cariplo and the Walter Tobagi School of Journalism and presented today in Milan.

The study highlights six different NEET profiles, from young people exposed to the risk of marginalization to graduates with high expectations, up to discouraged people and women out of the market due to care responsibilities. In total, in Italy there are 1.2 million. Of them, 35% are unemployed, 33.3% are available for work but are not actively looking for it. The remaining 31.7% are not looking for work and are not available.

Some experiences implemented to combat the phenomenon were then described, for example the ZeroNeet program of the Cariplo Foundation in collaboration with the Lombardy Region and Intesa Sanpaolo. The project, after just over a year, supports 55 interventions in the area between Lombardy and Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, involving 459 entities including non-profit bodies, public institutions and entrepreneurial entities. To date, more than 4,500 NEETs have been activated through orientation, training, social inclusion and job placement courses.

The Youth and Work program was also mentioned, active in fifteen Italian regions and which, since 2019 with Generation Italy, has involved around 6 thousand young people in 240 classes and 2500 companies, with 80% of participants finding work.

Forghieri (Intesa SP): “With a drop to 9% + 380 thousand young people at work”

"If we aligned the percentage of incidence of NEETs in Italy, today at 13.3%, to the percentage set as Europe's objective by 2030, 9%, it would mean being able to bring around 380 thousand young people back into the production process and this would have positive repercussions both on the country's employment and on economic growth and GDP", said Andrea Forghieri, executive director of Intesa Sanpaolo for Social Affairs, on the sidelines of the presentation of the research. Forghieri recalled that the issue is both social and economic, and that for Intesa Sanpaolo "young people are an absolute priority, our managing director Carlo Messina some time ago described them with a very beautiful image: they are our rare earths. So we need to discover them, valorise and take care of them because they are too important an asset, an increasingly scarce resource due to demographic aspects".