Anne Sonnet

This morning’s reflections were animated by a keynote address from an OECD economist, Anne Sonnet, specialised in youth employment. She had a pretty grim message to deliver. Youth face a much higher unemployment risk than adults. Youth unemployment increased sharply in the economic crisis. Youth belonging to the so-called NEET (neither in employment nor in education or training) category represented a particularly difficult challenge since, by definition, they were beyond easy help. Moreover, a range of country-specific barriers made across-the-board measures difficult to identify. On the other hand, identifying the common challenges was easy enough and, she insisted, the key among those was improving school-to-work transitions.