The article attempts to define the boundaries, select the features and give a social portrait of the NEET-youth. The author shows that this group includes young people of 15–24 years old, unemployed or economically inactive, who do not study and do not undergo professional training or retraining. The emergence of such a group at the beginning of the 21st century have been encountered by European countries, USA, Japan, China, South Korea. At present, the number of NEET-youth in Europe reaches 14,7%, with some correlation across countries. The author shows that those young people are an integral part of the Z generation and inherit its features: realism, mistrust of power, exactingness towards others, a clear distinction between work and personal life, free use of new technologies, orientation to leisure, immediate needs satisfaction. However, as a rule, they have neither material nor spiritual possibilities for their full realization. In the structure of NEET one can differentite unemployed and economically inactive youth, using alternative employment practices. For example, a conscious refusal from work and study for a time, as well as voluntarily made choice in favor of this variant of life. That makes the NEET-youth behavior socially and individually unpredictable. The author concludes that NEET-youth forms the precarious group of modern society, since it is under the threat of poverty, alienation and social exclusion.