Disability and IT employment

There were 270,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2023 representing 17% of all IT specialists working in the UK at that time. As such, representation in IT was lower than the norm for UK workers as a whole (13%) and if levelled up would have equated to an additional 66,000 IT specialists within the UK labour market.

Trends in workforce representation (2019-23)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

Representation across the UK

The proportion of IT specialists with disabilities in 2023 varied across the UK from just 8% of IT specialists in Northern Ireland to 19% for those working in Wales.

The difference in the level of representation of IT specialists with disabilities compared with that of workers as a whole also varied – in this case from around five percentage points in the case of the East Midlands, the West Midlands, the South West and Scotland to parity (rounded figures) in the North West.

Workforce representation by nation / region (2023)

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