Though accounting for 20% of the working age population in 2020, people with disabilities constituted only 14% of the total UK workforce.
There were 158,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2020 - 10% of all IT specialists in the UK at that time.
If representation in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' there would have been an additional 65,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities - 223,000 in total
Representation of people with disabilities in the workforce varies across the UK, from 8% of IT specialists in London, Scotland and the West Midlands to 13% of those in the South West of England.
Representation of people with disabilities also varies with IT role - from just 8% of 'specialist IT managers' (2020) to 15% of IT operations technicians.
Over the 2019-20 period, approximately 13% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK had some form of disability (4,000 on average) and the associated unemployment rate (2.7%) was notably higher than that recorded for IT specialists as a whole (2.0%).
Representation of IT specialists with disabilities is lowest in the banking/finance and manufacturing sectors (8% in each case over the 2016-20 period).
In 2020, the gross hourly pay for IT specialists with disabilities was £19phr - 88% of the remuneration for IT specialists without disabilities (£21phr).
In 2020, approximately 64% of IT specialists with disabilities held a degree/HE level qualification, compared with 71% of those without disabilities and 41% of workers with disabilities in other occupations.
Around one in six (15%) of IT specialists with disabilities hold a degree in an IT related discipline.
IT specialists with disabilities are more likely to receive job-related education/ training, with 30% stating it had been received in the previous 13 weeks during 2020 (compared with 23% of those without disabilities).
Disabled IT specialists are notably less likely to gain work via ‘in company’ contacts than those without disabilities (15% versus 17% stating that they had gained work in this way during the 2016-20 period).
