€100 billion is cost of Youth Unemployment across 21 EU states
Eurofound research presented at a recent seminar in the European Parliament estimated the cost of excluding young people from the labour market at over €100 billion across 21 Member States in 2009.
The issue of young people (aged between 16 and 24 years) who are not in education, employment or training (the so-called ‘NEETs’) has been extensively debated. However it is rarely costed on an EU scale. Eurofound calculations take account of social welfare payments, the potential contributions to gross national product (GNP) that these young people are unable to make and puts a preliminary figure on the cost to society of €14,000 per NEET, of which €11,000 represents unpaid contributions and €3,000 represents benefits payments.