Nature of employment

Occupation

Representation of people with disabilities varied according to the type of IT role in 2023 - from just 10% of programmers/ software developers to 23% of IT operations technicians.

Representation by IT occupation (2023)

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

Permanency of employment

IT specialists with disabilities were equally likely to be working in non-permanent employment as those without (3% in each case).

By comparison, the incidence of non-permanent employment was found to be notably higher within the wider workforce – again both with respect to those with or without disabilities (i.e. 7% of those with disabilities and 6% of those without).

When asked about the reasons for being in non-permanent employment, 14% of IT specialists with disabilities (over the 2019-23 period) stated that this was because they did not want a permanent job – a much lower proportion than amongst those without disabilities (27%).

Disability and unemployment

There were estimated to have been around 8,000 unemployed IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2023 – 21% 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 (1.9%) though well below that for individuals with disabilities as a whole within the labour market (6.4%).

^[1]See data notes.