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Neala Sheils, a 20-year-old from Glasgow, faced a challenging two-year period of job searching before she finally found employment at a hotel last month. During that time, she was among a rising number of young people categorized as Neet—those neither in education, employment, nor training. A significant proportion of this group, about 57%, have withdrawn entirely from the labor market and are not actively pursuing work. Neala highlights difficulties with the Jobcentre, where seeing different work coaches at nearly every session left her feeling like she was “repeating the same thing over and over again.”
Her situation began to improve only after she was referred to a specialized employability program operated by the mental health charity SAMH. This service provided support tailored to enhance confidence, teamwork, and interview skills, as well as assistance with job applications. Three months following this intervention, Neala secured a job. She explains that the program acknowledged her autism, a factor that had previously led to negative experiences in interviews. Neala recalls, “Some places were basically saying, ‘We can’t give you the job, you’ve not got good confidence, your eye contact’s not good,’ stuff like that,” which severely affected her confidence. Now employed, she is preparing to attend college with aspirations of working with older individuals who suffer from dementia. Her experience illustrates the difficulties many Neet young people encounter.
Nationwide, over one million individuals aged 16 to 24 fall within the Neet category. While some are formally classified as unemployed, most are considered economically inactive, meaning they are neither seeking employment nor available to start work. Scotland diverges from the rest of the UK by not providing Neet statistics in the same format. Instead, it stops tracking individuals once they reach 19 years old, despite challenges often emerging in the 20-24 age bracket. Allison Catalano, an economist at the Fraser of Allander Institute, emphasizes that this lack of comparable data complicates efforts to evaluate how Scotland is performing relative to the rest of the UK.
Catalano remarks that publicly available data does not clarify Scotland’s standing. She notes, “We know that 16 to 19-year-olds in Scotland look better than the rest of the UK. We don’t really know what’s going on with those 20 to 24-year-olds.” She points out that the 20-24 age group is less likely to remain in education and frequently faces difficulties transitioning into work, making this period critical. Alex Cumming from SAMH highlights mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and ADHD as contributing factors to rising Neet numbers. While acknowledging some effective initiatives, he stresses, “we need to be doing more,” especially since mental health problems have doubled over the past decade. These challenges adolescent students face can impact their academic qualifications and later confidence to enter college or the workforce. The Scottish government states it has supported over 55,000 young people with employability services since April 2019 and is seeking better ways to monitor engagement among 20 to 24-year-olds
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