Though accounting for 22% of the working age population in 2022, people with disabilities constituted only 16% of the total UK workforce.
There were 208,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2022 — 11% of all IT specialists in the UK at that time.
If representation in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' there would have been an additional 88,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities.
Representation of people with disabilities in the workforce varied across the UK from 7% of IT specialists in Northern Ireland to 16% in Wales.
Representation of people with disabilities also varies with IT role — from just 8% of Specialist IT Managers to 14% of IT Operations Technicians.
Approximately 29% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK had some form of disability during 2022 and the associated unemployment rate (4.2%) was notably higher than that recorded for IT specialists as a whole (1.6%).
Representation of IT specialists with disabilities appears lowest in the Energy/Water sector (7%) and highest amongst Transport/Communications companies (14%).
In 2020 the gross hourly pay for IT specialists with disabilities was £21phr — 89% of the remuneration for IT specialists without disabilities (£24phr).
In 2022 approximately 63% of IT specialists with disabilities held a degree/HE level qualification compared with 72% of those without disabilities and 45% of workers with disabilities as a whole.
Around one in ten (9%) of IT specialists with disabilities hold a degree in an IT related discipline.
IT specialists with disabilities are more likely to receive job-related education/ training with 32% stating it had been received in the previous 13 weeks during 2022 (compared with 25% of those without disabilities).
IT specialists with/without disabilities were most likely to have secured work by replying to an advert (34% and 32% respectively).
