Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of recent trends in the relative proportion of disabled people in the part-time and full-time work forces; and if he will make a statement.

Table 1 shows the proportion of disabled people among the working age population in full-time or part-time employment in quarter 2 of each year from 2013 to 2017. The table shows that the percentage of people in employment who are disabled increased from 10.1% in 2013, to 11.4% in 2017. There has been a larger increase in the proportion of part-time workers who are disabled, rising from 13.0% to 16.3% over the period, an increase of 3.3 percentage points. This compares to an increase in the proportion of full-time workers who are disabled, which has increased from 9.0% to 9.7%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points. Around two thirds of disabled people work full-time, with one third working part-time.

Overall, 17.4% of working age people were disabled in 2017. The employment rate of disabled people increased by 5.6 percentage points between quarter 2 2013, and quarter 2 2017, to 49.2%.

The Government is committed to seeing one million more disabled people in work over the next ten years. The Government recently published Improving Lives: the Future of Work, Health and Disability setting out our ten year strategy for helping disabled people to enter and remain in employment.

Table 1: proportion of working age people who have a disability, UK, April to June 2013 to 2017

Source: Q2 data, Labour Force Survey

Notes on the table:

1. In the Labour Force Survey (LFS), respondents are asked to self-classify their main job as either full-time or part-time.
2. In April 2013 changes were made to the wording of the disability questions in the Labour Force Survey. This means that estimates from 2013 onwards have been provided, as prior to this, data is not available on a consistent basis.
3. Working age includes people aged 16 to 64.
4. Missing values were excluded from the data to calculate proportions.
5. Percentages have been rounded to one decimal place.
6. Estimates from Quarter 2 are used as this is the latest available data for 2017 and this ensures all the data is comparable between years as the data is not seasonally adjusted.
7. The disability definition covers people who self-report:
8. A health condition or illness lasting or expected to last 12 months or more,
9. This condition(s) or illness(es) reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.