TOP 10 Countries by NEET Rate among Youth (15–24, 2025)
Youth disengagement remains highly concentrated in a relatively small set of economies
The NEET indicator tracks young people aged 15–24 who are not in employment, education or training. It is broader than youth unemployment because it also includes discouraged jobseekers, young carers and others who are outside both work and learning. For a 2025 snapshot, that makes it one of the clearest indicators of where school-to-work transitions are breaking down.
This refreshed version uses the latest World Bank / ILOSTAT-backed country observations published in WDI and applies a freshness floor of 2022–2024. That avoids mixing 2024 data with much older observations that can distort a “top 10” ranking. On that basis, the highest currently surfaced rates are concentrated in fragile states, structurally weak labour markets and a handful of small or isolated economies.
Editorial note on scope: a looser cutoff would also pull in older but still high observations such as Marshall Islands (40.0 in 2021) and Iraq (36.9 in 2021). This version keeps the ranking tighter and more current.
Top performers in the wrong direction: where youth NEET remains most acute
Table 1. Youth NEET rate (15–24), highest latest observations in the 2022–2024 window
| Rank | Country | Latest observation | NEET rate, % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somalia | 2022 | 51.0 |
| 2 | Lesotho | 2024 | 38.0 |
| 3 | Kiribati | 2023 | 35.4 |
| 4 | South Africa | 2024 | 34.6 |
| 5 | Jordan | 2023 | 30.2 |
| 6 | Kenya | 2022 | 27.8 |
| 7 | Angola | 2022 | 24.8 |
| 8 | Iran | 2024 | 24.3 |
| 9 | India | 2024 | 24.2 |
| 10 | Egypt | 2024 | 23.8 |
Source basis: World Bank WDI indicator SL.UEM.NEET.ZS, sourced from ILOSTAT. Ranking is editorially filtered to countries whose latest official observation falls in 2022–2024, then sorted from highest to lowest.
Chart 1. Youth NEET rate, top 10 in the freshness-screened 2025 snapshot
The spread matters. Even within this top 10, the gap between Somalia and Egypt is more than 27 percentage points, showing that “high NEET” is not one homogeneous condition but a continuum ranging from severe labour-market exclusion to still-manageable but clearly elevated risk.
Methodology
This page uses the World Bank’s WDI series SL.UEM.NEET.ZS, which is sourced from ILOSTAT and defines youth as persons aged 15–24. The headline 2025 framing is analytical rather than literal: country rankings are built from the latest official annual observation currently published in WDI.
To keep the ranking credible, the table applies a freshness floor of 2022–2024. That is an editorial rule, not a database rule. It avoids comparing a 2024 value for one country with a 2014 or 2008 value for another. Countries with older latest observations are excluded from the top 10 even when their published NEET rates are very high.
Values are reproduced as published in the latest surfaced WDI country pages and search snippets, with no modelled extrapolation to a fake 2025 country number. The only “2025” element is the snapshot concept: what the world looks like entering 2025–2026 when using the newest official country readings now available.
Main limitations are straightforward. NEET combines very different groups, from unemployed jobseekers to inactive young carers. Country years are not perfectly aligned. Survey quality and labour-force coverage vary. And a high NEET rate does not by itself tell you whether the main problem is weak demand for labour, poor school-to-work links, gendered care constraints or discouraged inactivity.
What the ranking tells us
The first pattern is that the upper end of the ranking is not dominated by rich-country youth unemployment stories. Instead, it is concentrated in fragile states, structurally weak labour markets and a few small economies where the education-to-employment pipeline is unusually thin. Somalia, Lesotho and South Africa sit there for different reasons, but the end result is similar: too many young people are disconnected from both human-capital accumulation and paid work.
The second pattern is that the ranking shifts meaningfully once stale observations are removed. The original draft leaned heavily toward a familiar OECD / upper-middle-income story. The updated version shows a broader and harsher map of exclusion. When the data window is kept reasonably fresh, Sub-Saharan Africa, fragile MENA cases and geographically isolated economies become much more visible.
The third pattern is gender. At the global level, young women remain far more likely than young men to be NEET. That matters for how the ranking should be read. In many countries the headline number is not just about joblessness. It is also about unpaid care, social norms, transport constraints, early marriage, interrupted schooling and weak re-entry channels for young mothers.
Finally, this is a growth and productivity story as much as a social one. A country that leaves one quarter, one third or one half of its youth outside both work and learning is not merely carrying a welfare burden. It is delaying skills formation, weakening future labour productivity and widening the gap between demographic potential and actual development outcomes.
What this means for readers
For readers, the NEET indicator is useful because it says more than the youth unemployment rate. A country can post a modest unemployment number while still carrying a large pool of young people who have stopped searching, dropped out of study or never reached stable training pathways.
For employers and investors, a very high NEET rate can signal weak skills pipelines, patchy vocational systems and a difficult environment for entry-level hiring. For educators and NGOs, it points to where re-engagement strategies matter most: second-chance schooling, apprenticeships, childcare support, transport access and targeted local employment services.
For families and young people themselves, the number is a warning sign about transition risk. High-NEET settings tend to mean slower entry into stable work, more time spent in informal or intermittent activity and a greater chance that gender, geography or household constraints will shape life outcomes more than skills do.
FAQ
Is NEET just another name for youth unemployment?
No. Youth unemployment covers only young people without a job who are actively looking for one. NEET is broader. It also includes those who are outside the labour force and not studying or training, including discouraged youth and many young carers.
Why does this updated top 10 look different from the older draft?
Because this version uses a stricter freshness rule. When you remove very old latest observations, the ranking becomes more current and more defensible. That pushes some older OECD-style examples down and pulls several African, fragile-state and small-island cases up.
Why are some countries excluded even if they may have very high NEET rates?
Because a 2025-style ranking becomes misleading if it mixes a 2024 number for one country with an observation from a decade ago for another. This version keeps only countries whose latest official WDI observation falls in 2022–2024.
Does a high NEET rate always mean weak schools?
Not necessarily. It can reflect weak labour demand, informality, conflict, transport barriers, unpaid care work, social norms around young women’s mobility, or the absence of apprenticeships and entry-level job ladders. Education quality is often part of the story, but rarely the whole story.
Why does gender matter so much in NEET statistics?
Because many young women counted as NEET are not merely “jobless” in the usual sense. They may be outside both work and study due to unpaid care, family expectations, early marriage, limited childcare or lack of safe mobility. That is why the female-male gap is a core policy signal, not a side detail.
Can a country improve NEET quickly?
Usually only partially. Short-run improvement can come from targeted employment services, apprenticeships, wage subsidies and re-entry programmes. But lasting progress normally requires stronger school-to-work links, better transport and childcare systems, and more reliable demand for formal entry-level jobs.
Official sources
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World Bank – WDI indicator SL.UEM.NEET.ZS
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS -
World Bank – metadata glossary for SL.UEM.NEET.ZS
https://databank.worldbank.org/metadataglossary/world-development-indicators/series/SL.UEM.NEET.ZS -
ILOSTAT – youth statistics hub
https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/youth/ -
ILO – “Measuring what matters: NEET vs youth unemployment”
https://www.ilo.org/resource/article/measuring-what-matters-neet-vs-youth-unemployment -
ILO – World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2025
https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/WESO25_Trends_Report_EN.pdf -
OECD – Youth not in employment, education or training (NEET)
https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/youth-not-in-employment-education-or-training-neet.html
