Until last month, councils ceased to include young people in their local Neets statistics when they reached their 19th birthday. But the government now wants councils to report this information based on academic age.
This means the cohort of young people included in Neets data will increase, since young people will feature in statistics for the entire academic year in which they turn 19.
David Howard, performance director at Greater Merseyside Connexions Partnership, said the change to the way data is reported is significant.
"It is a rational thing to do," he said. "But there will be an increased number of older young people in the monthly count. Inevitably more of them have left school or college and are unemployed so it will undoubtedly inflate the Neet percentage."
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