Around one in six young people in the UK are not in school, work or training, official figures show.

New data show that 893,000 youngsters aged 16 to 24 (15 per cent) were considered ‘NEET’ – not in education, employment or training – in the final quarter of last year.

The numbers had fallen slightly compared to the same quarter in 2011, when 957,000 young people of this age were NEET.

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock said the fall was welcome, but warned that any number of NEETs is too high.

The statistics come a week after the latest unemployment figures showed that rising numbers of young people are out of work. In total, 974,000 16 to 24-year-olds were jobless in 2012’s final quarter, up 11,000 on the previous quarter.

Last Thursday’s figures also show that around 17.5 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds, about 831,000 people in total, were NEET in the final three months of 2012.

But ministers said that the numbers of 16 to 18-year-old NEETs in the final quarter of the year were at their lowest for a decade.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.