NEETs decline, but for women the wall remains after 30

Italy’s youngest generation is shifting gears. Thanks to the combined effect of the PNRR (Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan) and demographic contraction, the number of young people neither studying nor working – the so-called NEETs – continues to fall. But look just beyond the age-30 threshold, and that momentum collides with an old obstacle: a family welfare system in Italy that still rests almost entirely on women’s shoulders.

The Collapse of NEETs Among Twenty-Somethings

The NEET rate among 15-34 year-olds has dropped to 15.1%, down from 17.8% in the same period the previous year. In absolute terms, that’s roughly 300,000 fewer young people, bringing the total to 1.82 million.

The sharpest improvement is among those in their twenties: in the 20-24 age group, the inactivity rate fell from 18.4% to 13.8%, while among 15-19 year-olds the drop was even steeper, down to 5.2%. A sign that youth employment support policies and new training opportunities linked to the PNRR are starting to produce concrete effects.

The Fracture at Thirty

The picture changes radically when looking at the 30-34 age group, where the reduction has been minimal: just 0.8 percentage points, with the rate still hovering around 22%. This is where the real divide emerges – a gender divide: among men in this age group, the NEET rate stays at contained levels, while among women of the same age it rises sharply, affecting nearly one in three.

Past the age-30 threshold, in other words, while male peers remain fully engaged in the labour market, a significant share of women drops off the employment radar entirely. It isn’t (only) a choice: it’s the effect of a context in which, once family care responsibilities arrive, it is still overwhelmingly women who take them on, in the absence of genuinely shared models of parental co-responsibility.

This picture is confirmed by data from the “Le Equilibriste” report, published annually by Save the Children together with Istat: in Italy, becoming a mother remains an employment turning point. While around 69% of women without children work, that share drops significantly among mothers, driven by the chronic shortage of early childhood services and the often prohibitive cost of nurseries. 20% of women stop working after having a child – a phenomenon the report calls the “child penalty”: motherhood as a genuine professional barrier, occurring right when women’s skills are at their most mature.

The South Remains the Most Critical Area, But It’s Catching Up Fastest

Geography matters too. In the North, youth inactivity rates are now aligned with European standards: 9.1% in the North-East and 10.4% in the North-West. Southern Italy remains the most exposed area, with rates still double those of the rest of the country – but it’s also where the strongest shift is happening: in the Islands, the NEET rate has fallen from 29.4% to 24.4%, and in the South from 27.1% to 22.6%.

A significant improvement, though not yet enough to close the gender gap: in southern regions, the shortage of childcare services and transport infrastructure often turns the job search into an obstacle course, especially for women with young children.

Education Helps, But It’s Not Enough

Educational attainment remains the strongest lever against exclusion: among graduates, the risk of becoming a NEET falls below 12%. But among women aged 25-34 with only a middle school diploma, the inactivity rate approaches 60% – a figure that reflects near-total social isolation, worsened by the absence of local welfare networks.

There is one encouraging data point: the share of “discouraged” young people – those who have stopped looking because they’re convinced they won’t find anything – is dropping significantly. Meanwhile, the share of those “awaiting a response” is growing – young people who have already submitted applications or attended interviews and are waiting to hear back. A sign that today’s NEETs are, in most cases, no longer a resigned mass, but rather a reserve of human capital ready to re-enter the labour market – provided the country builds the social infrastructure (childcare, care services, shared parental leave) needed to make that genuinely possible, for men and women alike.

Sources: Istat, Labour Force Survey Q3 2025; Save the Children, “Le Equilibriste – Motherhood in Italy 2025”.