27th November 2024
In 2021 the Centre for Social Justice published Now is the Time, a landmark report on disability in the UK. A key purpose of that report was to discuss the employment landscape for disabled people.
Since then, this issue has rocketed up the political agenda. Rising numbers of people out of work due to disabilities or health conditions, and claiming health-related state benefits, is now a fundamental issue within labour market policy. Progress has been made since the publication of Now is the Time, but this has often been slow or insufficiently ambitious.
Mind the Disability Employment Gap provides an update on the employment landscape for disabled people, warning that economic inactivity is a “defining challenge” for the new Labour government. It points to the number of people out of work due to disabilities or health conditions and claiming health-related benefits only continuing to rise.
The report highlights how almost a quarter of working age adults are now reporting a disability or significant impairment due to a health problem. More than half of young people, 16-24 year olds, who are not in education, employment or training (NEETs), are economically inactive – amounting to over half a million people (552,000). The number of inactive 16-24 year olds has risen by over 50 per cent in just three years.
This new report calls on the new government to “ensure that the needs of disabled and sick people and the barriers they face in the world of work are at the heart of their plans to ‘get Britain working’.
James Heywood, CSJ Head of Debt & Financial Inclusion, said:
“The Government must commit to tackling economic inactivity, especially among young people. Without supporting people back into the labour market, its ambitious employment targets are simply unachievable.
“The rising tide of long-term inactivity will cost the country billions of pounds if left unstemmed.
“It must start by ending the delays to Universal Support and truly starting the fight against the disability employment gap.”
