Less than half of people with a disability are in employment

People in employment who are affected by a range of disabilities including chronic illness earn a median income of above €20,000. File picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews

Workers with a disability are paid far less that those without, while a third of people with a disability receive long-term payments and have no employment income.

Those are just two of the findings of the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in its latest Income, Employment and Welfare Analysis of People with a Disability which was published to coincide with the UN International Day of People with a Disability tomorrow.

Less than half (44%) of people with a disability of working age were employed in 2019, statistician Emma Hogan said.

The main sectors employing people with a disability in 2019 were Wholesale, Retail & Trade and Health & Social Workhttps://t.co/RD1sWRtn0q #CSOIreland #Ireland #Health #HSE #Disability #LabourForce #IrishFamilies #IrishHouseholds #Jobs #Employment pic.twitter.com/HUUrmQQyuQ

— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) December 2, 2021

"Separately the data shows the median income of those with a disability in employment in 2019 was €20,212. This compares to the state median of €36,095 in 2018, which is the most recent available," she added. Median is the middle number between the highest and the lowest in a set of numbers, or the number that finds the middle between the top and bottom halves, rather than calculating the average.

Median incomes for people with disabilities

The CSO said that people with deafness or a serious hearing impairment, blindness, visual impairment, or other disabilities including chronic illness, had median earned income of more than €20,000.

The lowest median earned income for people with a disability in employment was €9,937 for those with intellectual disabilities, it added.

Wholesale, retail, and trade employed the most people with a disability at more than 22,500, while there were almost 17,000 people with a disability in health and social work. Those involved in public administration and defence number almost 15,300, the CSO found.

In the 2016 Census, 323,062 people of working age between 15 and 64 said they had a disability.

"By 2019, 28.1% were in employment with no social welfare, 4.9% were employed and had a long-term disability payment and 11% were employed and had another working age social welfare payment. Therefore, just under half (44.1%) of working age people with a disability were in employment in 2019," the CSO said. 

People with a disability aged 25 to 34 had the highest proportion in employment at 56.7%, it added.

Education gap

When it comes to education, there is a wide gap between those with a disability and those with none studying Irish. The CSO said just 56% of students with a disability did Irish in the Leaving Certificate, compared with 84% of those students with no disability.

At third level, arts and humanities was the most popular subject for people with a disability. Three quarters of students with a disability who sat the Leaving Certificate Applied in 2016 were enrolled in further education and training in the following three years.

Leaving Certificate Applied is different to the Leaving Certificate in that it is a distinct, self-contained two-year programme aimed at preparing students for adult and working life.

When it came to students with a disability who sat the Leaving Certificate itself in 2016, 40% were enrolled in higher education in the following three years, the CSO found.

GP visits and medical cards 

In relation to health, around three in five people with a disability under 65 have either a GP visit card or a medical card. 

The average cost of a pharmacy claim for a person with a disability was just over €18 higher than the State average of €53.30 in 2016, the CSO said.

Director of the National Disability Authority (NDA), Dr Aideen Hartney, said it welcomes the publication of this report and commends the CSO on its innovative combination of administrative and census data. 

"This new analysis is important in contributing to monitoring the progress of policies and strategies that have an impact on the lives of persons with disabilities," she said.