Introduction

The disability employment gap is a key measure of inequality. This paper provides an update to the disability pay gap in Northern Ireland for 2021 and presents a quick read version of published research that explores differences in employment between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. The aim is to measure and improve our understanding of these differences.

2021 update: disability employment gap

The disability employment gap for 2021 was 47.6 percentage pointsA. This shows a 4.7 percentage point reduction from the 2011 figure (52.3 percentage points).

  • The employment rate for people without disabilities was 85.9% (increased from 83.7% in 2011)

  • The employment rate for people with disabilities was 38.3% (increased from 31.4% in 2011)

  • The disability employment gap was the difference between 85.9% and 38.3%, which is 47.6 percentage points

The Census 2021 Flexible Table Builder has been used to give this broadly equivalent figure for the disability employment gap in 2021 to compare to the 2011 gap identified in the Disability and Employment research.

Quick read: Employment and disability original research

Background and aims

Disability is one of the nine equality categories in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. This means that public authorities are required to consider the need to promote equality of opportunity for people with disabilities. For people with disabilities who can work and want to work, it brings income, inclusion and helps build self-respect and confidence.

Disability:
In this study, a disability is defined as a health condition that limits a person’s daily activities and has lasted or is expected to last at least a year. It could limit a person’s activities a little or a lot. This is self-reported. This was a question in the 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census of the Population and is a standardised definition of disability.

This research had two main aims:

  1. To identify and measure the things that made it more likely that a disabled person would stay in work or would find work over a ten-year period (2001 to 2011).

  2. To analyse and measure the disability employment gap in 2011.

What we did

We used data from the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) for 2001 and 2011. The NILS links data from the Northern Ireland population census to health registration data. The data from both years allows us to explore people staying in work or finding work, while we used 2011 data only for the disability employment gap. We only included people who lived in households rather than a communal residence like a care home. The people in this study were age 20 to 49 years in 2001 and 30 to 59 years in 2011 so they were working age at both time points.

What we found

Staying in work and finding work

Staying in work

29.0% of people with disabilities were working in 2001 (that’s almost 3 in every 10 disabled people).

71.9% (around 7 in 10) of the people with disabilities who were working in 2001 were also working in 2011.

The data showed that the three things most strongly related to people with disabilities staying in work were:

  1. Having good general health

  2. Having at least one car in their household

  3. Having at least two A-Levels (or another qualification that is the same standard)


Finding work

Around a quarter (24.4%) of the people with disabilities who were not working in 2001 were working 10 years later.

The data showed that the three things most strongly related to people with disabilities finding work were:

  1. Having worked either earlier in 2001 or the year before that

  2. Actively looking for work and available to start at the time of the 2001 Census

  3. Having at least two A-Levels (or another qualification that is the same standard)


Figure 1. Staying in and finding work

Employment status transition for people with disabilities between 2001 and 2011

Household population with limiting long-term illness in 2001, aged 20 to 49 years, by employment status in 2001 and 2011.

Disability employment gap

In 2011, the disability employment gap was 52.3 percentage points.

  • The employment rate for people without disabilities was 83.7%

  • The employment rate for people with disabilities was 31.4%

  • The disability employment gap was the difference between 83.7% and 31.4%, which is 52.3 percentage points

The overall disability employment gap is presented above, but there is a huge amount of variation in disabilities and in the personal and social characteristics that people with disabilities have.

Personal and social characteristics

When we looked at some of the personal and social characteristics we found differences in the disability employment gap.

General health

People in better health were more likely to be employed with an overall employment rate of 83.8% for those reporting ‘good’ general health and 15.1% for those reporting ‘not good’ general health. The disability employment gap was 28.4 percentage pointsB for people reporting ‘good’ health, and 33.4 percentage pointsC for people reporting ‘not good’ health.

Education

The higher the education level, the lower the disability employment gap. For disabled people with degree-level qualifications the gap was 33.8 percentage points and for those with no qualifications it was 50.0 percentage points.

Age and sex

The disability employment gap was a little higher for males (53.3 percentage points) than for females (51.1 percentage points). The disability employment gap also generally increased with age; it was 46.9 percentage points for 30 to 34 year-olds and 53.5 percentage points for 50 to 54 year-olds.

Other factors

Having dependent children, multiple household cars, providing unpaid care, volunteering and living in a more valuable property were all associated with a lower employment gap.

Type of disability or health condition

The 2011 Census included questions about health conditions. Not everyone with a health condition in the Census reported that it limited their day-to-day activities, so not all were classed as disabled. This varied from 45.1% of people with deafness or partial hearing loss to 95.1% of people with mobility or dexterity difficulty. Analysis showed that different conditions were associated with different employment gaps.

The employment gap was highest for those with confusion or memory loss (61.8 percentage points) and lowest for those with deafness or partial hearing loss (14.5 percentage points). Gaps for all health conditions are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Disability Employment Gap by type of disability or health condition
Source: NILS 2011 research data
Disability or health condition Disability employment gap (percentage points)
Confusion or memory loss 61.8
Communication difficulty 55.9
Learning or behavioural difficulty 54.5
Mobility or dexterity difficulty 53.4
Mental health condition 51.3
Long-term pain or discomfort 42.0
Blindness or partial sight loss 31.9
Chronic illness 27.7
Difficulty breathing 25.1
Deafness or partial hearing loss 14.5
Other health conditions 24.7

Explaining the disability employment gap

Further analysis showed that general health, education and other conditions all explained more than half of the employment gap for each of these health conditions except for mental health. These factors explained 42.4% of the gap for mental health.

Taking all of these available factors into consideration didn’t account for all the overall disability employment gap. General health explains around a quarter (25.7%) of the disability employment gap (13.4 out of 52.3 percentage points). Other large contributors are educational qualifications (6.4 percentage points) and providing unpaid care (5.6 percentage points). The unexplained part (15.4 percentage points) accounts for 29.5% of the disability employment gap.

Limitations and conclusions

This study does not reveal information on the quality of work undertaken by disabled people. This research also does not account for health or employment changes occurring between these time points.

As stated in the introduction, the disability employment gap is a key measure of inequality. It is higher in Northern Ireland than in England, Scotland or WalesD. Measuring the gap and tracking changes can help evaluate policy interventions and indicate if disabled people are disproportionately affected by wider economic and social issues.

This paper presents an update to the disability employment gap for 2021 using the Census 2021 Flexible Table Builder. New research using the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study 2021 would need to be commissioned to explore those staying in work and those finding working between 2011 and 2021.

For more information you can read this research paper in full.

Acknowledgements

The help provided by the staff of the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Study (NILS) and the NILS Research Support Unit (NILS RSU) is acknowledged. The NILS is funded by the Health and Social Care Research and Development Division of the Public Health Agency (HSC R&D Division) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). The NILS-RSU is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Northern Ireland Government. The authors alone are responsible for the interpretation of the data and any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of NISRA or NILS. The authors would also like to thank colleagues from the Northern Ireland Department for Communities for comments on earlier drafts of this report, NISRA’s Tech Lab for their support in the development of the quick read material and the report’s original author Dr. Jos IJpelaar.

Contact Details

Published by: Administrative Research Unit, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency

Lead Researcher: Carmel Colohan

Telephone: 028 90 388465

Email: carmel.colohan@nisra.gov.uk

Accessibility contact

Please contact Dissemination Branch for assistance with accessibility requirements or alternative formats. Contact details are:

Email:

Telephone: +44 (0)300 200 7836

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Footnotes

  1. This figure focuses on 30-59 year olds living in households and enumerated in the 2021 Census of Population in Northern Ireland. Return to report

  2. The disability employment gap of 28.4 percentage points for people reporting ‘good’ general health is calculated by subtracting the employment rate for people with disabilities reporting ‘good’ general health (56.9%) from the employment rate for people without disabilities reporting ‘good’ general health (85.2%). Most people (95%) reporting ‘good’ general health do not have a disability. Return to report

  3. The disability employment gap of 33.4 percentage points for people reporting ‘not good’ general health is calculated by subtracting the employment rate for people with disabilities reporting ‘not good’ general health (13.9%) from the employment rate for people without disabilities reporting ‘not good’ general health (47.4%). Most people (96.5%) reporting ‘not good’ general health have a disability. Return to report

  4. Employment of disabled people in UK report. The figures in this report come from the Annual Population Survey and represent 0.02% on the NI population. Return to report