In addition, young people are particularly vulnerable to economic fluctuations, as their employment rates are strongly affected by the business cycle. While unemployment rates rose slightly and employment rates fell among those aged 16-24 over the decade to 2003 (Quintini and Martin, 2006) of most concern to policy makers are those that are “not in employment, education or training”, or NEETs. Figure 2.12 below reports the share of young people who were NEET in 1995, 2003 and 2008 for those aged 15-19 and 20-24.