The International Labour Organization (ILO) has released a new working paper revealing significant employment challenges faced by people with disabilities. The report, titled “A Study on the Employment and Wage Outcomes of People with Disabilities,” underscores that individuals with disabilities experience higher unemployment rates, lower earnings, and a tendency toward self-employment.
The ILO’s findings indicate that people with disabilities are less likely to participate in the labor market and, when they do, they earn an average of 12% less per hour compared to their non-disabled peers. Notably, 75% of this wage gap—equivalent to 9%—cannot be attributed to differences in education, age, or job type. In low and lower-middle-income countries, this wage gap is even more pronounced, reaching 26%, with nearly half of the disparity unexplained by socio-demographic factors.
Women with disabilities face an additional layer of disadvantage, grappling with a substantial gender pay gap. In 14 countries with gender-disaggregated data, women with disabilities earn 6% less than their male counterparts in developed nations and 5% less in developing countries.
The report highlights that only 3 in 10 people with disabilities are active in the labor market, reflecting a low overall participation rate and slow progress toward greater inclusion. This limited engagement may be partly due to the perceived flexibility of self-employment, which can offer better adaptability in terms of working hours and work environments, as well as a way to circumvent workplace discrimination.
To address these issues, the ILO paper proposes several measures to enhance the labor market inclusion of individuals with disabilities. Recommendations include improving the accessibility of online recruitment processes, providing greater support for employers to hire persons with disabilities, and implementing workplace adaptations to assist disabled employees.
This working paper is part of a broader research project on inequalities, which also includes a previous study on employment and wage disparities between rural and urban areas published in February 2024.
