Unemployment among young people in rural areas in Europe has been a persistent concern, presenting unique challenges and implications. The rural-urban divide, limited economic opportunities, and demographic shifts have contributed to this issue.
Rural areas often face a lack of diverse industries and employment options, leading to a higher vulnerability to economic downturns. Limited access to education, training, and infrastructure further exacerbates the situation, making it difficult for young people to acquire the necessary skills and find suitable employment. As a result, many young individuals from rural areas are forced to migrate to urban centers in search of better prospects.
Across the EU member states and associated countries, the share of NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training) within the resident population aged 15-29, ranged in the second quarter of 2022 between 3% (Netherlands) and 4% (Iceland) to 19% (Romania) and 20% (Montenegro, North Macedonia). Estonia (16%), Italy, and Spain (14% each), as well as Bulgaria (12%), were among the EU countries that faced a higher number of youngsters not in employment education or training. Lithuania (6%) and Portugal (7%) were the only countries in our sample that had lower NEET rates in the second quarter of 2022. However, since seasonal variation may affect quarterly data, one can look at yearly reports, as Figure 2 does.
In the early 2000s, several European countries initiated policies and programs to address youth unemployment in rural areas. Efforts focused on promoting entrepreneurship, providing vocational training, and enhancing access to financial resources for rural businesses. These initiatives aimed to stimulate local economies, encourage job creation, and retain young talent in rural communities.
Despite these interventions, unemployment rates remained relatively high for young people in rural areas. Many factors contributed to this, including the ongoing trend of rural depopulation, inadequate infrastructure, and the persistent dominance of traditional agricultural practices. These challenges required sustained efforts to bridge the rural-urban gap, encourage innovation and diversification of rural economies, and ensure equitable access to education and employment opportunities for young people in rural areas.
Addressing youth unemployment in rural Europe demands comprehensive strategies that consider the unique characteristics and needs of these regions. Collaboration among policymakers, educational institutions, businesses, and community organizations is essential to create an enabling environment that fosters economic growth, encourages entrepreneurship, and supports young people in building sustainable livelihoods within their rural communities.
In this sense, our project is tracking how the Public Employment Services offer an appropriate answer to rural NEETs. More specifically, we are researching three interconnected different pillars.
The first Work Package (WP1) reviewed national policies based on a systematic analysis of the NEET regulations in seven EU countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, and Spain), a secondary data analysis of NEETs rates on two age categories and a scoping review of academic recent literature on NEETs across Europe.
The national policies analysis shows that none of the NEETs categories defined by Eurofound (2016) is systematically targeted and the most frequent groups are “other NEETs” (295 of the policy documents analyzed), which is heterogeneous by definition (including Roma youth or other ethnic minority, drug/alcohol addicts, refugees, fresh graduates, young people that left the social protection system, etc.), long-term unemployed (24% of the policy documents), respectively ill or disabled (19% of the policy documents). All other NEET groups are, overall, less frequently mentioned. The policy analysis of the documents issued since 2010 in the above-mentioned seven EU countries shows that the target on youth, with no differentiation between types, is by far more common than focusing on specific groups. Only in the early-2010s moment, there is more concern with the long-term unemployed. In 2014 discouraged NEET come to attention, while interest in short-term unemployed decreased over time.
The most used policy instruments at the national level are regulation and direct provision by public authorities. Financing services provided by NGOs come close, while financial support is marginal within the overall policy mix. It may be noticed the residual approach in the case of Romania, with the focus on financial transfers, especially subsidies for employers and a general lack of provision in the case of Bulgaria. In turn, Lithuania stresses active measures, financial transfers, and social services. The southern states are not as homogeneous as expected from a ‘Mediterranean’ cluster (Minas, Jacobson, Antoniou, & McMullan, 2014). Portugal’s comprehensive NEET policy champions active measures, but also financial transfers; Spain includes more financial transfers; Italy is focused predominantly on social services, but as contrasted to Romania, the state remains by far the main actor in the field.
On the other hand, the rural-urban distinction is rarely addressed in the existing academic literature, despite the higher rates of NEETs in rural areas, which reflects the lack of differentiation that one may observe in Sothern countries and at the level of the European Union. Baltic countries maintain some small distance between cities and rural areas, while Bulgaria and Romania are still marked by deep inequalities.
The Work Package 2 (WP2) is working at ground level with stakeholders, making a mapping good good practices in supporting young NEETS in non-urban areas. For that, we are entailing several case studies taking place in rural locations of Portugal, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Spain.
Our preliminary results show that, for example, in Portugal, the Instituto Pedro Nunes Incubator paired with the local Municipality and the PES services to launch Neetmakers, a two year programme dedicated to foster social and entrepreneurial skills in rural NEETs. And in Faro, a region marked by tourism and seasonal work, we focus a national practice of digital training courses, Jovem + Digital, launched during the pandemic in 2020.
In Spain, one of the case studies occurs in Pallars, Lleida in Catalonia, Spain, project called SINGULARS. Born in 2015, this project is to reinforce the employability of young people who are not employed and not integrated in the education or training systems. We will see its impact on the field and the outcomes in employability and improving skills in young people on that area.
In Bulgaria, we focused on “Mobile offices” in Blagoevgrad district, where the Employment Agency has started the active provision of the Mobile Employment Office service, which provide a full range of services to employment offices, with the aim of reducing the proportion of discouraged and inactive people, as well as helping job seekers.
In Lithuania, two cases are being studied: one at Elektrėnai, project JUDAM, with the aim to reduce the number of unemployed, uneducated, unrepresented, and not registered at the PES youth by implementing measures of activation and motivation. Another case study at Klaipeda, through Project KARJERAS, focusing professional guidance services are provided by excellent professionals in their field, who openly meet every client who visits RKC, individually assess the situation, advise and rescue them from career pitfalls.
In Estonia, three cases are being studied. “My first job”, to support recruitment and employment of people belonging to risk-group; “Minors’ employment subsidy”, to increase work opportunities for minors and to encourage the development of work habits and experiences among young people (to encourage employers to hire minors for summer jobs or part time jobs to give them work experience and develop work habit); and Career counselling, to provide aid to settle issues concerning suitable employment, career decisions and education choices.
Finally, Work Package 3 (WP3) has directly asked young people about their situation and how they see the support of the Public Employment services in Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain. This survey has two different waves, in order to compare the opinion and results of the intervention of the PES with this young population. In the first wave, implemented at the beginning of 2023, we have reached more than 2.000 valid answers from 6 countries and persons aged 25 to 29 years old. The second wave is starting now, during June 2023 and the results will be published by the end of this year.
Conference of the Track-IN project on ACTIVATING NEETS: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS ACROSS EUROPE
From the 6thto the 8thof June 2023 we organized the conference titled “Activating NEETs: Challenges and Solutions across Europe” in Naples (Italy) hosted by one of our partners, the University of Naples “Parthenope”. At this conference, we had the opportunity to discuss our first results with researchers and experts in our field.
The conference kicked-off with the intervention of one of the keynote speakers, Niall O’Higgins, Senior Research Specialist at the International Labour Organization. He talked about the gender issue and how young women’s NEET unemployment rates are higher and more persistent, especially in rural areas, making scarring effects more common among female NEETs.
On the other hand, he stressed the need to find new ways to categorize NEETs, mostly using new clustering methods, in order to have a better classification of cases and identify different solutions to their problems.
Later, we could listen to the talk by Ruggero Cefalo, Researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, and Editor of the Social Policy Review (Policy Press). He highlighted the importance of the role of space when we study the Rural NEETs. In his opinion, it is important to look into the subnational/regional level, as opposed to national approaches, and to do it across time to better understand youth unemployment.
Moreover, he mentioned that dedicated research should have territorial sensitivity. From the policies perspective, he urged for horizontal coordination between educational and employment policies at the regional level.
The first part of the conference finished underlining the relevance of the new EU Rural Pact and how the Youth Employment Fund can be a partner to fulfill this need. The Rural Pact is a very recent framework for cooperation among authorities and stakeholders at the European, national, regional, and local levels. It contributes to achieving the shared goals of the long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas by facilitating interaction on rural matters between public authorities, civil society, businesses, academia, and citizens.
Launched in December 2021, the Pact has been developed with other institutions, stakeholders, and members of the Rural Pact community, and the final proposal was endorsed at the Rural Pact conference on 15-16 June 2022. Elements of implementation such as the Rural Pact coordination group are still being elaborated and will come in early 2023.
In the second part of the conference, we organized a round table with Italian stakeholders: – Simona Cafieri from the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT); Giovanna Linfante, Responsible for the ANPAL Statistical Office (Italy); Serena Quarta, Researcher of the Salerno University and member of the Caritas (Italy); and Michele Raccuglia, Responsible for the South Area of ANPALservizi (Italy).
The Italian representatives discussed their points of view in a lively talk. The role of the Resilience and Recovery Mechanism in the inclusion of young people in the labor market; the lack of access to digital means and to the Internet and the risks of techno-optimism (how people prefer informal contact in public encounters) and the digital divide between regions were some of the most prominent topics addressed by the invited speakers.
To finish our conference, we delivered the results up to now of the different WP of the Track-IN project. Our second round-table of the day included Elena Marta (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy), Co-coordinator of the Track-IN project; Claudia Petrescu (Quality of Life Research Institute, Romania), coordinator of WP1; Sofia Ribeiro (ICS – University of Lisbon, Portugal), coordinator of WP2; and Antonella Rocca (University of Naples Parthenope, Italy), coordinator of WP3.
To finish up the day, Francisco Simões (Iscte, University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal), Coordinator of the Track-IN project; and- Mariano Soler-Porta (University of Malaga, Spain) Science Communication Coordinator of the Track-IN project presented some details of the future European Rural Youth Observatory. This Observatory, which will be launched by the end of this year, aims to be a reference on all topics concerning rural young people, being a hub of knowledge and a platform for collaboration between different researchers, stakeholders, and young people, through the research, consulting, training, project development activities.
[DMS1] From the WP1 Policy brief
