For Canadians of a certain age, the term “Neet” evokes memories of TV commercials for the cream depilatory of that name, though I learn from Wikipedia that in North America “Neet” was changed in 2002 to what it had always been in France: “Veet,” which is a play on “vite,” i.e., quickly.
For younger Canadians and policy wonks, NEET now refers to “not in employment, education or training.” It is a big policy and political concern in the United Kingdom, where almost a million young people are NEETs. Not having a million young people “launch,” if in fact that’s what’s happening, is problem enough. Paying for them to do nothing, if nothing is what they’re doing, is getting to be very expensive. The U.K. is facing up to the fiscal implications of such support, much of which is for supposed mental disabilities. The left of the Labour Party is resisting reform.
We have NEETs, too. In recent years, Statistics Canada has added NEET-related questions to the Labour Force Survey. Despite there being only six of us for every 10 Brits, we have roughly the same number of NEETs as they do — though they tend to count 16-24-year-olds while Statistics Canada tracks 15-29-year-olds.