Employment: Disability
(asked on 9th June 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the disability employment gap was on 8 May 2015; and what methodology is used in calculating that gap.
The disability employment rate gap is the difference between the employment rate of disabled people and the employment rate of non-disabled people.
One way to measure the gap is using the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The latest data available from the LFS relates to January 2015 to March 2015. The latest LFS figures are set out in the table below. This table shows the disability employment rate gap along with the disability employment rate gaps for people who have difficulty in hearing and those who have difficulty in seeing. Data on those who are deafblind is not collected on the Labour Force Survey.
Main health condition | Employment rate | Employment rate gap |
All working age people who are not classified as Equality Act core disabled and/or work-limiting disabled (excluding those who did not state their health situation) | 79.3% | n/a |
All working age3 disabled people4 | 46.3% | 32.9% |
Working age disabled people4 who report their main health problem as difficulty in seeing | 45.7% | 33.5% |
Working age disabled people4 who report their main health problem as difficulty in hearing | 64.9% | 14.3% |
Working age disabled people4 who report their main health problem as being deafblind5 | n/a | n/a |
Notes:
1 Estimates were obtained from the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) and relate to January 2015 to March 2015.
2 Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
3 Men and women aged 16-64.
4 In April 2013, changes were made to the wording of the disability questions in order to bring the LFS into line with the Government Statistical Service (GSS) Harmonised Standards for questions on disability and also enable the LFS estimates to be consistent with the definitions used in 2010 Equality Act. As with all new questions, they are subject to ONS monitoring of responses for several quarters, and should therefore be interpreted with caution. Due to the definitional changes, these estimates cannot be compared with estimates for previous years which were based on a definition relating to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).
5 This data is not collected. Deafblind is not listed as a main disabling condition either on LFS,
It is not possible to say how many people whose Access to Work awards currently exceed the proposed limit on those awards are deafblind as there is nowhere to record deafblind specifically on the Access to Work computer system (DISC).
From December 2014, all deafblind cases are administered by the Visually Impaired specialist team. And therefore should be recorded under the Visual Impairments category for Access to Work allocation purposes.