Nature of employment

Occupation

Representation of people with disabilities varies with the type of IT role - from around 8% of Specialist IT Managers in 2020 to 15% of IT Operations Support technicians.

Representation by IT occupation (2020)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS
* Five-year average

Permanency of employment

As with other workers, IT specialists with disabilities appear more likely to be working in non-permanent employment than those without and in 2020, around 7,000 (5%) were found to be working on a temporary as opposed to permanent basis (with a comparison figure of 3% for IT specialists without disabilities).

By comparison, the incidence of non-permanent employment was found to be slightly higher within the wider workforce - both with respect to those with or without disabilities (i.e. 6% of those with disabilities and 5% of those without).

When asked about the reasons for being in non-permanent employment, 14% of IT specialists with disabilities (over the 2016-20 period) stated that this was because they did not want a permanent job - a much lower proportion than amongst those without disabilities (24%).

Disability and unemployment

Over the 2019-20 period, there were estimated to have been around 4,300 unemployed IT specialists in the UK with disabilities - 13% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK at that time.

At 2.7%, the corresponding unemployment rate^[1] for IT specialists with disabilities (average over the two-year period) was also noted as being much higher than the rate associated with IT specialists as a whole (2.0%) though below that for the entire UK workforce (3.1%) and individuals with disabilities as a whole within the labour market (5.5%).

^[1]See data notes.