Inequalities and challenges experienced by disabled people in Scotland: evidence review

Labour Market

This chapter provides an overview of demographics, existing research regarding inequalities (where comparable data is available) and challenges experienced by disabled people in the labour market.

Employment gap

Scotland’s Labour Market Insights: April 2025^[27] reported specifically on disabled people in employment. It was reported that in January to December 2024, the employment rate for disabled people aged 16-64 was estimated at 51.4%^[28]. This is a decrease from 52.7% in 2023^[29].

Economic inactivity measures people who are neither in work, available for work or actively seeking work^[30]. In January to December 2024, Scottish Labour Market Insights found that 34.3% of inactive people aged 16 to 64 gave their reason for being inactive as “long-term sick or disabled”^[31]. This is higher than the UK figures at 28.6%^[32].

The Disability Employment Gap (DEG) reports the difference between rates of employment for disabled people and people without disabilities. Over the longer term, the disability employment rate gap has narrowed from 37.4 percentage points in 2016 to 31.5 percentage points in 2024^[33]. The Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) published a briefing in 2024 on the declining disability employment gap in Scotland and noted that this is less of a decline than expected, however this may be due to an increase in disability in workers already employed rather than more disabled people entering the workforce^[34]. This briefing suggests that there is a particular increase in workers reporting mental health related disabilities and learning difficulties. The SPICe briefing also highlighted that disabled workers are disproportionately more likely to work in education, retail and health and social work compared to people without disabilities. Disabled people are disproportionately less likely to work in manufacturing, professional, scientific and technical activities, or construction^[35].

Whilst the DEG appears to be reducing and more disabled people are in work than in 2014^[36], this could be understood in a potential context of an increasing number of workers reporting disability rather than an improvement in access to employment for disabled people. The Glasgow Disability Alliance (GDA) also noted that progress on improving the employment rate of disabled people was temporarily hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic, where the DEG increased from 32.6 percentage points in 2019 to 33.4 percentage points in 2020^[37]. Their report theorised this may be due to disabled people’s concerns about their health and safety at work which meant they were unable to work due to self-isolation and shielding^[38]. GDA suggest the need for more action to support disabled people defined as “economically inactive” and help them in to work as well as retaining workers with disabilities already in employment^[39]. The GDA reported that inequalities and barriers to work are particularly experienced by people with learning disabilities and mental distress^[40].

Pay

The Disability Pay Gap measures the difference in income between disabled and non-disabled people and provides an insight into pay inequality. In the year July 2023 to June 2024, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) found that, across the UK, disabled employees earned £2.35 per hour less than non-disabled employees^[41]. The TUC reported that the median hourly pay for disabled employees was £13.68 compared to £16.03 for non-disabled employees which means that on average disabled people earned 17.2% less than non-disabled people in 2023-2024^[42]. The disability pay gap also intersects with the gender pay gap as disabled women earned £4.05 less than non-disabled men in 2023-2024^[43].

Experience

The TUC conducted another survey in 2025 exploring 1,000 disabled workers experiences of bullying, harassment and discrimination in the workplace^[44]. The report showed that 49% of participants reported experiences of bullying and harassment in the last year alone. Of those who reported an experience of bullying or harassment in the last five years, 42% reported a negative impact on their mental health, 38% reported a decline in workplace confidence and 31% reported a negative impact on their performance at work^[45]. Furthermore, 42% of those who had experienced discrimination or harassment did not report it to their employer as they said they were worried they would not be taken seriously or that it would not be handled fairly^[46]. The TUC report^[47] also found that 20% of participants had not told their employer about their health condition or disability, with just over half of these participants stating they were worried about repercussions. The most commonly feared repercussions were being viewed as unable to do their job, losing their job, being treated unfairly, and colleagues being told about their disability without consent^[48]. It should be noted that these results may not be fully representative of Scotland as they used a British sample. Nonetheless, the report begins to provide evidence of the discrimination disabled people experience in the workplace.

Relatedly, the Scottish Trade Union Congress found that only 7% of members surveyed thought that the right to request reasonable adjustments at work was understood by employers, which the report suggests that even when disabled workers disclose their disability, they may face challenges obtaining adequate support and adjustments^[49]. It is important to note that both TUC reports mentioned above do not provide full details of their methodology.

The existing research highlights that more work is required to support disabled people in employment due to an increase in the number of disabled people in employment in Scotland^[50], a need to improve access to employment for specific groups of disabled people^[51] and that disabled employees face discrimination at work^[52]. Research suggests that this could include more work on reasonable adjustments, improving accessibility to workplaces and training for employers^[53].

There may be value in investigating disabled people’s lived experience of employment in the specific context of Scotland, particularly for people with intersectional characteristics.

In reviewing the evidence base, it is recognised that there are ongoing challenges around the availability of robust disaggregations of labour market statistics by protected characteristic in Scotland. A significant contributor to this has been the reduction in achieved response rates by ONS’s Labour Force Survey and Annual Population Survey in recent years^[54]. Resolving these challenges in a sustainable way will be a longer-term challenge across the UK. Programmes of work are being undertaken by both the Scottish Government^[55] and the Office for National Statistics^[56] in response to these issues, which aim to develop more robust and reliable statistics in the coming years.