Nature of employment

Occupation

Representation of people with disabilities varies with the type of IT role — from just 8% of specialist IT Managers in 2022 to 14% of IT Operations Support technicians.

Representation by IT occupation (2022)

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 2022 only around 1% 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 notably higher within the wider workforce - both with respect to those with or without disabilities (i.e. 6% of those with disabilities and 7% of those without).

When asked about the reasons for being in non-permanent employment, 20% of IT specialists with disabilities (over the 2018–22 period) stated that this was because they did not want a permanent job — a much lower proportion than amongst those without disabilities (26%).

Disability and unemployment

There were estimated to have been around 9,000 unemployed IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2022 – 29% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK at that time.

At 4.2%, the corresponding unemployment rate^[1] for IT specialists with disabilities was higher than the rate associated with IT specialists as a whole (1.6%) though well below that for individuals with disabilities as a whole within the labour market (7.0%).

^[1]See data notes.