Facts and figures

› The incidence of disability increases with age – 10 per cent of people aged 16 to 24 are disabled compared with one third of people aged 50 to 65.

› By 2020, 58 per cent of people over the age of 50 will have a long-term health condition.

› There are 6.9 million disabled people of working age in Britain – one in five of the working population.

› Some 50.4 per cent of disabled people are employed compared with 80.2 per cent of nondisabled people. One million disabled people without a job would like to work.

› The World Health Organisation predicts that depression will be the leading cause of disability by 2020.

› There are regional variations in the prevalence of disability. Northeast England and Wales have the highest number of disabled people, with one quarter of the working age population in these regions disabled. London, the South East and the East of England have lower than average proportions of disabled people at 17 per cent.

› Disabled people in employment are more likely to work in manual and low-skilled occupations and less likely to work in managerial, professional and high-skilled occupations.

› At £10.28 per hour, the average gross hourly wage of disabled employees is about 10 per cent less than that of nondisabled employees, who earn an average of £11.30 per hour.

› People with mental health conditions or learning disabilities have the lowest employment rates at only 20 per cent. One in six people will have a common mental illness at some point in their lives.

› 60 per cent of employers admit that they would not employ someone with a history of mental illness.

› Disabled 16-year-olds are twice as likely to be out of work, education or training as their nondisabled peers (15 per cent compared with 7 per cent).

› 21 per cent of disabled people aged 16 to 24 have no qualifications, compared with 9 per cent of nondisabled people of the same age.

› Disabled people are only half as likely as nondisabled people to be qualified to degree level and are twice as likely as nondisabled people to have no qualification at all.

› In February there were 2.43 million people claiming incapacity benefit in Britain – 41 per cent were claiming for mental and behavioural disorders.

› There were 175,000 participants in the New Deal for Disabled People programme in February.

Sources: Department for Work and Pensions (2007); Office for National Statistics (2007); Labour Force Survey (December 2006); and Disability Rights Commission (2007)

Web watch

Where to start
worksmart.org.uk/health/disability_rights
Learn your way around the Disability Discrimination Act – and therefore your rights as a disabled employee – thanks to this plain-English website from the Trades Union Congress. It covers the basics, such as what qualifies as a disability under the law, through to whether you are entitled to paid time off should you become disabled. It also explains your employer’s duty to help you get back to work should this happen. All useful information.

The other side
www.employers-forum.co.uk/www/index.htm
This site, like the organisaton that runs it, comes at the issue of disability from a business perspective. Its goal is to provide the advice and assistance that organisations need to serve disabled customers and to recruit and retain disabled employees. For example, a new report discusses the ways in which employers and government need to change in order to make it easier to recruit people with mental health problems. There’s also a ream of employer-focused information about the Disability Discrimation Act and corporate social responsibility.

Maximising sustainable employment
www.remploy.co.uk
Remploy’s job is to help disabled people to find long-term work, so unsurprisingly there’s plenty of straightforward information about the sectors in which they operate. There’s also advice about vocational courses and modular development programmes that can help jobseekers to develop their skills to meet the needs of potential employers. Alongside this there are a series of profiles about the candidates Remploy have placed in positions ranging from delivery driver and stock control officer to conference and banqueting coordinator and accountant.

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