THE NUMBER of young people not in education, employment or training has shown its biggest quarterly increase in almost a decade, new figures have revealed.

There were 797,000 so-called “neets” in the last quarter of 2020 — up by 39,000 on the previous quarter, and 34,000 more than in the same quarter in 2019 — according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published today.

About two out of five were classed as “unemployed and looking for work” and the remainder regarded as simply “economically inactive.”