Young and Job-Hunting in Europe: The Countries Where the Fewest Are Left Out

The EU Picture in 2025

One of the key measures of youth opportunity in Europe is the NEET rate - the share of young people aged 15 to 29 who are neither in employment nor in education or training. According to Eurostat, the EU average stood at 11.0% in 2025. The EU has set a target to bring this below 9% by 2030.

The rate had fallen steadily from 2015 to 2019, before rising again with the economic disruption of 2020. Since that peak, it has come down across all age groups, and by 2025, the share was lower than it was before 2020 - a sign of recovery, as Eurostat describes it.

The Countries Already Below the 2030 Target

Nine EU countries had NEET rates below 9% in 2025, meaning they had already met the EU's long-term goal. According to Eurostat, these are: the Netherlands, Sweden, Slovenia, Czechia, Portugal, Ireland, Malta, Luxembourg and Denmark.

At the other end, 10 EU countries recorded NEET rates above the EU average of 11.0%. Among them, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania had rates above 13%. The distance between the best and worst performers is significant: Eurostat notes that the proportion of young adults who were NEETs was almost 4 times higher in Romania than in the Netherlands.

How Age Shapes the Risk

The NEET rate is not flat across the 15 to 29 age range - it rises sharply with age. In 2025:

• Ages 15 to 19: 5.3% were NEETs
• Ages 20 to 24: 12.8%
• Ages 25 to 29: 14.7%

Most teenagers remain in formal education or training, which keeps the youngest group's rate relatively low. The pressure point is the mid-to-late twenties, when people have typically left full-time education but may not yet have secured stable work.

The Role of Qualifications

Education level has a clear relationship with NEET risk, according to Eurostat's 2025 figures for those aged 15 to 29:

• Tertiary education (high level): 8.0% NEET rate
• Upper secondary (medium level): 11.0%
• Below upper secondary (low level): 12.8%

The spread between countries is much larger when you look within education groups. For young people with a low level of education, NEET rates ranged from 6.1% in Sweden and Poland to 35.8% in Romania. Eurostat notes that in most EU countries, having a tertiary qualification is associated with the lowest NEET risk - though Greece is flagged as an exception to that pattern.

City or Rural: Does Where You Live Matter?

Within countries, location also plays a role. Eurostat's 2025 data shows:

• Cities: 10.3% NEET rate
• Towns and suburbs: 11.0%
• Rural areas: 12.2%

The gap between city and rural rates is largest in Romania (20.5 percentage points) and Bulgaria (18.5 percentage points), making geography one of the sharper dividing lines in youth opportunity across the continent.

The Gender Gap

In 2025, young women in the EU were more likely to be NEET than young men. Eurostat puts the female NEET rate at 12.0% against 9.9% for men - a difference of 2.1 percentage points. The gap is not uniform across age groups: it is small in the 15 to 19 bracket but grows significantly for those aged 25 to 29, where it reaches 6.0 percentage points.

Romania had the largest country-level gender gap at 11.2 percentage points. Three countries - Estonia, Finland and Belgium - recorded slightly higher NEET rates for men than for women.

Source: Eurostat, Statistics on young people neither in employment nor in education or training (data extracted April 2026).