Disability and IT employment

There were 208,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2022 representing 11% of all IT specialists working in the UK at that time. As such, representation in IT was lower than the norm for UK workers as a whole (16%) and if levelled up would have equated to an additional 88,000 IT specialists within the UK labour market.

Trends in workforce representation (2018-22)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

Representation across the UK

The proportion of IT specialists with disabilities varies across the UK — in 2022 from just 7% of IT specialists in Northern Ireland to 16% of those working in Wales.

The difference in the level of representation of IT specialists with disabilities compared with that of workers as a whole also varied substantially. In this case, the largest difference was apparent in Yorkshire/Humberside where representation of disabled workers was 9 percentage points less than amongst the workforce as a whole (i.e. 8% versus 17%).

By contrast, in Scotland, Wales and the South East the level of representation for people with disabilities was little different amongst IT specialists versus the workforce as a whole (two percentage points in each case).

Workforce representation by nation / region (2022)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS
* Five-year average