from the information provided by the respondents on their principal activity in each month of the month observation period four mutuallyexclusive activity states are defined using in work in education in unemployment neet unemployed and inactive out of education neet inactive young people who combine education and work are treated as in education vocational training can unfortunately not be identified as separate from education an individual s chain of monthly activity states from the age of to is interpreted as her schooltowork trajectory the three panels are merged for the oecd countries to give the sample used for analysis