Romania tops list of EU countries with highest proportion of young people out of work or education

31 August 2026 Romania has the highest proportion of young people aged 15-29 who are neither employed nor enrolled in school, university, or another form of education, nor involved in any form of training, the so-called Neither in Employment nor in Education or Training, or NEETs, in the European Union, according to Eurostat. More exactly, 19.2% of young people in Romania were in a NEET situation in 2025. The figure is slightly lower than in 2024, when roughly 19.4% of young people were in this situation. The countries with the highest percentages of young people in this situation were Romania, Bulgaria (13.8%), and Greece (13.6%). By comparison, the EU average was 11%. The countries with the lowest percentage of NEETs were the Netherlands (5.3%), Sweden (5.9%), and Slovenia (7.6%). "It is