Cap Digital, the Etincelle Network and EdFab, with the help of the Grande Ecole du Numérique, have conducted a survey on the equipment, uses and knowledge of digital technology, and the relationship between young people who have dropped out of school and the digital professions and training.

• 98,000 young people still left initial education without a diploma in 2016, or 9.2% of 18-24 year olds.
• The unemployment rate is 50% among young dropouts, compared to 11% for young college graduates.
• The need for digital training is growing, the needs are very important and the public is still too poorly informed

Young dropouts have a higher rate of smartphone equipment and internet usage than the French average, but still lower than the average for 18-24 year olds (ARCEP-CGE 2016 survey figures).

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The Internet is used by 87% of young dropouts to search for a job or training. Comparatively, 31% of French internet users conducted a job search on the internet in 2016, 63% among 18-24 year olds and 78% among the unemployed.

Pôle Emploi is the third most used application (85%) by young dropouts.

However, they are not familiar with office tools.

49% of young dropouts do not want to work in the digital sector. But 79% are unaware of the existence of short, free training courses to work in this sector.

The conclusion of the study highlights the lack of visibility of jobs and training in digital professions, reinforced by a form of self-censorship among young dropouts.

The France Stratégie report"Vision prospective partagée des emplois et des compétences" (Shared Vision of Jobs and Skills) comes to similar conclusions: insufficient visibility of digital professions, a necessary opening of skills to integrate the digital sector, and a rethinking of training and professionalization processes in the sector. Three components of the traditional training-employment relationship are, according to the report, particularly affected by this evolution:

• The world of social and professional integration, where the learning of digital technologies has given rise to several particularly innovative initiatives to renew the vision of the pathways to employment for people who have been permanently distanced from it;
• Initial training structures are organizing responses by developing new modes of cooperation with companies, and by integrating more and more initial training practices and continuing education actions. Such a dynamic is particularly observable in everything that concerns the training of technicians in digital technology.
• Lastly, companies themselves may have to become heavily involved in continuing education to resolve major tensions in their recruitment needs. They can also be mobilized to address the problems of retraining certain employees affected by the rapid obsolescence of the skills that make up their professions."

Survey conducted by telephone between January 23 and June 23, 2017 among a panel of 135 unemployed young dropouts (48% women, 52% men) (61% do not have a high school diploma) aged 17 to 33 (87% are between 18 and 25), spread across the 5 regions of the Etincelle network (Grand Est, Hauts-de-France, Ile-de-France, Pays-de-Loire, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes).