Nearly one in four of the working-age population is classed as disabled, according to latest data.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics have also found that the number of people reporting a long-term health condition and the number classed as disabled has continued to rise.
The increase in disability prevalence is associated with an increase in people reporting mental health conditions and ‘other health problems or disabilities’, the data, The employment of disabled people 2024, concluded.
More positively, nearly one in three people classed as being disabled one year were no longer classed in this way the next year, the ONS added.
Disability and work
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The disability employment gap remains wider for: men, older people (aged 50 to 64), people with no qualifications, people living in social housing, people not living in a couple, people living in Northern Ireland, the north of England, Scotland and Wales, and people in the ‘white’ ethnic group, the ONS said.
The disability employment rate is lower for disabled people with a mental health condition and five or more health conditions, it added.
Moreover, disabled people were more likely than non-disabled people to be working in health, retail and education; in lower-skilled occupations; to be self-employed; and to be working part-time (and subsequently working fewer hours), it found.
Such people are also more likely to be working in the public sector, in a small workplace (or one with fewer than 50 employees), to be underemployed, working in low pay or zero-hour contract role, in a job with fewer career opportunities, in a role with less employee involvement, and have lower average wellbeing scores.
Overall, disabled people were more likely to be economically inactive and, for those that were the majority gave ‘long-term sickness’ as their main reason for being inactive.
They were more likely than non-disabled people to want a job yet were less likely than non-disabled people to have had a job in the last two years, the ONS said.
Nevertheless, despite these ongoing underlying trends, the ONS argued the direction of travel when it came to narrowing the disability employment gap is broadly positive.
Since 2013 to the start of the pandemic (or March 2020) the general trend in disability employment was “positive”, it said.
“There had been strong growth in the number and rate of disabled people in employment and a narrowing of the gap between the rate of disabled and non-disabled people in employment (the disability employment gap),” it said.
While the pandemic initially reversed these trends, things were now coming back. Overall, there were 5.5 million disabled people in employment in the UK in the second quarter of 2024. This was an increase of 310,000 on the year.
“The increasing number of disabled people in employment (between 2013 and 2024) was driven by four main components of change: disability prevalence (60%); disability employment gap (20%); non-disabled employment rate (20%); and increases in the working-age population (5%),” the ONS added.
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