1. NZDSN National Employment Symposium “Why Work Matters”
Todd Krieble
NZIER
Valuing Access to Work: the economic impact of improving access to education and employment for people with disabilities

2. Valuing access to work Todd Krieble
NZDSN National Employment Symposium
August 2017

3. Our brief
NZIER was commissioned to analyse the economic impact of improving for people with disabilities
access to education
employment
The opportunity for markets like tourism
The cost of changes to accessibility standards for work and play

4. Our framework
Source, NZIER, Martin Prosperity Institute

5. Economic Analysis

6. Employment scenario - what if?
Factor
PWD
PWD and PWoD
Unemployed in labour force
42,000
144,000
Employed
416,000
2,232,000
In the labour force
458,000
2,376,000
Unemployed, %
9.2%
6.1%
‘What if’ scenario
Increase in employment
14,000
Increase in employment (%)
3.4%
0.59%
Source: NZIER and Statistics New Zealand

7. The size of the employment prize
Source: NZIER

8. Cumulative ‘what if’ fiscal savings over 10 years
estimate the annual saving fiscal $270 million.
estimated cumulative fiscal saving over 10 years $3 billion.
employment shock will increase tax revenue by $387 million compared to the baseline.

9. Education Percentage of the population by highest qualification
Source: Statistics New Zealand Disability Survey, 2013

10. Change from the 2015 baseline of a 2% increase in labour productivity for PWD $m
Source: NZIER

11. Accessibility and ageing tourism markets
Percentage with a disability
Visitor arrivals (thousands)
WHO estimates that 15% of the world population has a disability - expected to increase as populations age
Tourism directly contributed $12.8 billion to NZ’s GDP in the year ending March 2016
Dwyer and Darcy (2011) - the contribution of disabled tourists to Australia’s tourism GDP was between 11% and 18% of total tourism GDP in 2003/04
Source: Statistics NZ
Source: MBIE Tourism Forecasts

12. Accessibility tourism opportunity
Tourism directly contributed $12.8 billion to NZ’s GDP in 2016
Dwyer and Darcy (2011) - the contribution of disabled tourists to Australia’s tourism GDP was from 11% to 18% of total tourism GDP
For NZ this would imply a accessibility tourism market of $1.4 – $2.3 billion

13. The cost of making accommodations
Together, individual businesses and people with disabilities, will have the best information about what cost-effective accommodations work for a specific set of circumstances.
Literature suggests people with disability can be reluctant to act and that costs may be lower than expected
If there is cost-effective way to make any employee more productive – why not?

14. Examples of current investment
Standard / Access policy
Annual operating cost
Scope
NZ on Air disability services programming
$4.9m
29 hours of general programming
NZ on Air TV captions and audio description
$2.8m
300 Weekly captioned hours
40 weekly audio description broadcast hours
Health and disability regulatory and enforcement services
$24m
Implementing, enforcing and administering health and disability related legislation and regulations, and provision of regulatory advice to the sector and to Ministers, and support services for committees
National disability support services
$1,158m
Delivery of disability support services provided through DHBs and third party service providers
ACC social rehabilitation
$590m
Return to work and activities of daily living
Human Rights Commission
$98.9m
In 2015/16 the most common area for human rights complaints or in enquires was employment. Disability was the most common ground for a human rights complaint.

15. public policy – where to next

16. Public policy tools advice to government regulation funding monitoring
delivery
information/education
taxation

17. Supporting a set of government objectives
fiscal savings
employment
productivity
well-being

18. So what is the take home message?
Of people with disabilities, 40,000 are unemployed
and another 184,000 are not looking for work.
If we can absorb 14,000 into work (over time without displacing others) there is an annual $270m benefit savings and a $1.4b contribution to the economy.
Together, individual businesses and people with disabilities, will have the best information about what cost-effective accommodations work for a specific set of circumstances.