“In relation to NEET youth, the task of detailed study of the official interpretation of the concept of NEET in Kazakhstan with the allocation of subgroups. This task is important because of the need to develop more targeted measures to support young people who need it from the state”, – experts from Kazakhstan Aiman Zhusupova and Aigerim Erken write in their article, exclusively for CABAR.asia
According to official data, the share of NEET youth in Kazakhstan is consistently declining every year: from 7.8% in 2011 to 6.9% in 2021. However, official data on NEET youth is unlikely to be true and is overly optimistic.
The main problem is the low coverage of state support measures for NEET youth, which was attributed to the number of omissions of previous approaches. At the same time, the new Concept of Youth Policy in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2023-2027, adopted at the beginning of this year, with a budget of more than 1 billion US dollars, also lacks a systematic approach to their development and implementation.
Reasons for the vagueness of the NEET concept
The concept of “temporarily unsettled youth” from 2022 includes a part of young people outside the sphere of employment and education, who are temporarily not working, not studying in educational organizations or not undergoing vocational training, retraining.
Since 2017, several social groups have been included in the NEET youth category:
- Unemployed youth, data provided by Employment Centers and other government agencies.
- Employable youth with a disability.
- Young people with chronic diseases or any kind of addiction.
- Young housewives, mothers of many children and single mothers.
In 2023, 4 small groups are also included in the number of social groups that form NEET youth: unemployed youth – graduates of colleges and universities, released from places of deprivation of liberty, those who completed military service; capable of productive activity, with limited opportunities; inactive youth – suffering from alcohol and drug addiction, chronic diseases and undergoing appropriate rehabilitation, not looking for work or study; involved in housework – helping their relatives with household chores, housewives, including mothers of large families and single mothers.
However, in our opinion, the approach used does not reflect the completeness of the NEET youth count for several reasons.
The most important question is how to account for unemployed youth who would like to work but despaired of finding one and stopped looking for it. Despite the fact that the sources about Kazakhstan’s experience in calculating NEET youth indicate that this category of youth is considered, it is most likely that the group of youth that is registered in employment centers at the place of residence or on the e-government portal is considered. However, young people often do not apply to employment centers, but prefer to look for work on their own through advertisements on the Internet and acquaintances.
It is also worth noting that the procedure for registering as unemployed is overly bureaucratic and complex. That is, the hidden, shadow, unregistered unemployment must be kept in mind.
The chances that this group of young people will be considered in the ongoing sample survey of the BNS are also not so high, which is especially important when taking into account internal migration processes in the country.
Thus, the first group (unemployed youth) needs to be supplemented with data on young people who have despaired and stopped actively looking for a job. It is this category that should be in the focus of state support. Some researchers in Europe also believe that unemployed and economically inactive youth, as well as young people at risk who voluntarily or involuntarily do not use their personal life potential, should be considered as NEET. Also, a number of researchers believe that “only the group of the desperate, who deliberately refused to look for a job, is of interest from the point of view of the criteria for selecting the NEET group.”
Secondly, such factors as the obligation of educational institutions to employ graduates fictitiously reduce the share of NEET in Kazakhstan. This requirement is interconnected with the budget of organizations. Often, due to the difficult realizability of the task, both graduates and representatives of educational institutions go to the distortion of data, providing fictitious employment, which ultimately affects the official data on the number of unemployed youth.
NEET youth also include those who are on the other side, namely those who are not in search of work due to personal life choices.
Thus, today one of the most important tasks in the field of NEET youth policy is the issue of specification of youth groups of the NEET category. This fact is also recognized by the authorities, who proceed from the need to increase the targeting of measures to support NEET youth, which requires, among other things, a clear understanding of the algorithm regarding how interaction will be established, or, in other words, achievability will be ensured. Certain groups of young people, in particular, how they will single out those who are desperate to find work from among the unemployed, conditionally “gave up”, how their coverage will be ensured.
In addition, it is of particular relevance due to the fact that in March 2023 the Concept of Youth Policy was approved for 2023-2027, the budget of which is more than 1 billion US dollars. At the same time, one of the main directions of the Concept is to reduce the share of NEET youth from 6.7% to 3.5%. The Concept envisages the issuance of soft loans, the employment of young people (2.3 million young people) and the provision of higher education (2.8 million young people).
Where is the NEET youth going?
In this context, it is necessary to consider several material factors that objectively influence the current situation related to NEET youth:
First, the growth in the number of young people. Kazakhstan in two years will face an ever-increasing wave of young people who will join the workforce. In addition, at the end of 2022, the age of youth was extended to 35 years. As the researchers emphasize, Kazakhstan passed the first “youth bulge” (generations born in 1985-1991) 10 years ago relatively calmly, and the current younger generation is much more numerous, and the peak at the current bulge is not yet visible.
Figure 1 . Gender and age pyramid at the beginning of 2022 . Demographic Yearbook of Kazakhstan, 2022
Secondly, it is necessary to consider the objectively growing competition, which is caused, among other things, by the shortage of high-quality and complex jobs in the structure of the country’s economy.
Over the past 10 years, the number of workers in the manufacturing industry has increased by only 43 thousand people, although this industry offers the best prospects for the introduction of technology, productivity growth and jobs. On the contrary, employment is growing in the trade sector, which is the leader in terms of the share of the shadow economy, with all the ensuing consequences, including poor social protection of workers and, often, the lack of opportunities for professional development.
At the same time, Kazakhstan has one of the lowest shares of high-skill jobs (37%), as well as the highest rate of low-skill jobs in the job structure (17%). Today in the country, the largest number of employed people (61%) work in professions with medium and low skill levels, which undoubtedly affects their income.
Separately, it is worth noting here that the undoubted trend is that older people stay in the labor market for an increasingly longer period, which further increases the competitive environment.
Third: the lack of effectiveness of tools aimed at reducing the proportion of NEET youth. Those measures that were actively used to solve the problems of unemployed youth turned out to be ineffective precisely in terms of approaches. In particular, the often-formal attitude to the provided free technical and vocational education only affected the fact that the labor market added unemployed and self-employed young people with higher and secondary specialized education.
Fourth, the low coverage of government support measures for the target audience, which is due to the lack of a clear focus on certain groups of NEET youth and the lack of accounting for a certain part of them.
Of course, all of the above factors significantly complicate the implementation of the task of reducing NEET youth in Kazakhstan, and without solving some of them, such as creating quality jobs, it is impossible to talk about a full-fledged strategy in this area. At the same time, this task goes beyond the youth policy and is one of the most important strategic goals in general for the development of modern Kazakhstan.
Why do young people get into NEET category?
What factors can influence youth to be classified as NEET?
Weak career guidance counseling touches on the fact that young people choose a specialty in which they have no interest or abilities. As a result, there is either poor-quality work performed by specialists or the fact that young people, having worked for some time in their specialty, later move to another, and, in fact, the time spent by both the youngest person and the state’s funds are wasted.
In many ways, the wrong choice of specialty by graduates is due to the fact that the decisive word or choice was made by the parents, which ultimately affects the fact that many of them sooner or later change their occupation, and being not so qualified, they easily fall out of the ranks of the employed. In the same context, the choice of a specialty can have a significance only on the basis of ideas about its high pay, the prestige of the specialty, as a result of which the youth’s own aspirations and interest in a particular professional activity are devalued.
Another problem is the quality of the fundamental skills of Kazakhstani youth (PIAAC data). The actual functional illiteracy of young people reduces the ability to retrain and adapt to the labor market.
Among the problems in the field of education that ultimately affect the growth in the number of NEET youth, it is necessary to include an ill-conceived and undeveloped policy for the distribution of grants, which does not consider market demands in any even the shortest term, and also has no connection to regional needs of the labor market. This approach entails an overflow of the labor market with those specialists whose services the labor market is already overfull, which leads to youth unemployment.
It is impossible not to note socio-economic factors as indicators of why young people will fall into the category of NEET. As studies has shown, they are more involved in housework than their peers from wealthy families, helping their parents in matters of providing for the family. This factor was further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, when less well-off youth found themselves in even more difficult circumstances, without being able to fully receive education at home.
It should be noted that a low level of wages is recorded in the country, which is also proved by various international studies. In addition, within the framework of the existing social policy, there is no system for adequate protection of the labor rights of young people. Sociocultural attitudes of the population of modern Kazakhstan, when the values associated with the importance of finding one’s vocation, focusing on professional development and consistent growth are increasingly devalued (the cult of “easy” money), and perhaps not instilled in families, by parents. The low significance of this factor is also recorded in surveys of young people, when professional fulfillment is not among their main values. As a result, young people are more focused on informal connections, or hope for good luck, and are disoriented in their development strategy in the field of professional activity.
The low demand for labor exchanges, career centers, employment centers, and resource centers indicates that the activities of these institutions should be reformatted, in addition, it makes sense to notify young people about existing opportunities within the framework of schooling in the final grades.
Conclusion
The state, realizing the significance of the NEET youth problem, is implementing a number of measures aimed at reducing it. However, today, they are rather ineffective. The reasons for this situation include, first of all, the fact that these measures are based on a formal approach focused on quantitative indicators. In turn, countries that are successful in reducing NEET youth have precisely an individual approach, separate and targeted work with various categories of young people.
In addition, it is necessary to acknowledge the lack of consistency in the implementation of state support measures. So, one of the main approaches in the provision of social services is case management, and if we start from this approach, within the framework of the approved Youth Policy Concept, such key stages for case management as getting into contact should be considered in the first instance. In particular, there should be a clear understanding of how high the reach of certain groups of young people will be, especially with respect to that part of it that is defined as “inactive youth who are not looking for work or training”. That is, a clear strategy should be developed aimed at reaching certain groups of NEET youth in order to inform about the support measures provided by the state.
Questions also arise with another stage traditional for case management – determining the capabilities and needs of the target group, that is, assessment. For example, it is clear that if entrepreneurship development programs are more successfully implemented among urban youth, then among rural ones, these programs should have a different specificity, as regards the convenience of visiting them, the content that should be in Kazakh, and may have changes in its high-quality content, a greater focus on the development of entrepreneurship in the field of agriculture. At the same time, it is rural youth who are in the most vulnerable position in Kazakhstan, who move from villages to cities in search of work, often without the appropriate qualifications and work experience.
The monitoring/evaluation stages cannot be ignored either. Existing incentive mechanisms for leaving the NEET category do not imply monitoring the effectiveness of their implementation, one-time, a detailed analysis is not carried out of how the steps taken have influenced the further life trajectory of young people in the NEET category.
Of great importance in the case study is the development of indicators that give an understanding that assistance can be considered completed, a clear understanding of the achievement of the desired effect. In this context, as an example, we can cite the implementation of free technical and vocational education, which since 2017 has been provided to young people in all regions of the country in order to reduce unemployment. Nevertheless, domestic employers are often not satisfied with the quality of training of trained technicians.
One can also dwell on the lack of control over state-funded employment of young people in enterprises. It is assumed that due to this mechanism, young people acquire professional skills and will be able to independently find a suitable job for them in the future. However, no one controls this process, no one asks the question whether there is a real acquisition of professional skills by young people. That is, there is no understanding of how rationally the allocated funds are used to subsidize the wages of young professionals.
NEET youth are in a special focus of attention in all countries of the world. Thus, a long stay in NEET leads to social consequences that are not always realized by this part of the youth. A long absence of work has a negative impact not only on their psychological and physical well-being (degradation of young people, loss of their skills, as well as a decrease in social contacts outside the family), but also entails such consequences as the criminalization of young people, an increase in crime, poverty, and radicalization.
At the same time, for young people, the working and learning environment are the main channels for involvement in the social and economic life of the community. The lack of socialization of NEET youth, their isolation from society, entails the possibility of manipulation by various interested forces, “explosions of aggression” due to their social unfulfillment.
Separately, it should be noted that the interest of countries in reducing the share of NEET is also due to economic benefits. Studies show that the direct benefit of reducing the NEET rate of youth in OECD countries could be 1.2 trillion US dollars a year. Calculations carried out as part of the preparation of the Human Development Index indicate that a decrease in young people’s access to education leads to a decrease in GDP by 15% per year.
Recommendations
Thus, in relation to NEET youth, the task of detailed study of the official interpretation of the concept of NEET in Kazakhstan with the allocation of subgroups. This task is important because of the need to develop more targeted measures to support young people who need it from the state. In particular, then it will be possible to more clearly raise the question of assessing the reachability of certain groups of NEET youth, their needs and opportunities, which may differ.
With regard to the implemented state policy concerning the support of NEET youth, it is also necessary to consider such standard stages of the implementation of social policy as the stages of monitoring / evaluation, developing indicators of the effectiveness of the implementation of the tasks set, as well as monitoring the implementation of the tasks set.
At the same time, it is important to introduce the possibility of adjustments in the course of the implemented policy, those shortcomings that will be identified in the course of monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the policy to reduce the share of NEET in Kazakhstan.