Harnessing Untapped Potential (Disability Issues)

If you are reading this, you probably have a job. But in Canada, for the 2,457,350 potential labour force participants with disabilities (ages  15  to  64),  employment  is  fraught  with  barriers and uncertainties.

Over the past nine months, Statistics Canada has been releasing its analyses of the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey, 2006 (PALS). This is only the second time this comprehensive survey has been conducted, which means  that  we  now  have  the  beginnings  of comparable data over time.

What do the numbers say? Of the pool of potential workers described above, 51 percent were  employed,  5  percent  were  unemployed, and 44 percent were not in the labour force. The corresponding figures for Canadians with- out disabilities were 75 percent, 5 percent, and 20 percent, respectively.

These are global numbers that do not begin to tell the whole story.

We know that people can be “not in the labour force” for many reasons, such as retirement, attending school, family responsibilities. However, a closer look at the PALS data reveals that being involuntarily out of the labour force is a significant problem for individuals with disabilities. For example, in the important workforce demographic of men and women aged 45 to 54, roughly nine in 10 individuals without disabilities were labour force participants, compared to roughly six in 10 among individuals with disabilities.

However, the news is not all bad. Between 2001 and 2006, the employ- ment picture for people with  disabilities  actually improved. Over that period, the gap in the unemployment rate between people with disabili- ties and people without disabilities narrowed (this figure measures the unemployed as a percentage of all those in the labour force). Thus, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities fell from 13.2 percent to 10.4  percent,  while  it  fell  for  those  without  disabilities  from  7.4  percent  to 6.8 percent.

It would be nice to believe that this small trend means greater employ- er awareness of  barriers, which may  well be true. However, Statistics Canada is more cautious, crediting the strong Canadian economy during this period, and further noting that nearly all these gains seem to have come from actual employment growth for people with disabilities, and not from people simply leaving the labour force.

But let us turn for a moment to the key issue of barriers. PALS sheds light on these as well, since the survey also asked about the kinds of work- place  accommodations  workers  with  disabilities  required. Workplace accommodations can take many forms – modified work stations, special equipment or technical aids, etc. Yet the most common accommodation cited, one reported by 20 percent of employed persons with disabilities, was “modified hours or days.” Interestingly, this was also the most commonly cited accommodation measure among respondents with disabilities who were either unemployed or not in the labour force.

As we look at the rigidity of  our workplaces, and at the woefully under-utilized  pool  of  labour  and  talent  represented  by  Canadians  with  disabilities, these data give us much to ponder.