1. Data and information on disability and employment
Professor Mark Priestley

2. First the bad news… 
There is no source of reliable and up to date information to compare precisely the employment of disabled persons with the general labour market situation in European countries.
The EU relies on its core Labour Force Survey for strategy, target setting and monitoring of employment policies.
Disability status is not identified in the harmonised core of the European Labour Force Survey (EU LFS)
Most European countries do not collect any disability data in their own Labour Force Surveys (national LFS)
This is a problem…

3. A brief example from the UK
The UK Government publishes quarterly official statistics on disability and employment, using data from its national Labour Force Survey.
This shows a large disability employment gap of around 33 percentage points, although it has continued to narrow slightly throughout the period of the crisis.
The government announced a target to halve the disability employment gap and a Green Paper in 2016.

4. Now the good news… 
The Eurostat disability database does include some estimates of labour market participation for disabled persons.
These are based on ad hoc modules to the EU Labour Force Survey conducted in 2001 and 2011 (and 2021?)
There have been some follow-up analyses
It is possible to make parallel estimates from data collected annually in the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC)
ANED analyses this data every year and provides it to the Commission (the data is different but useful)
EU-SILC provides lower general estimates than EU-LFS but they are strongly correlated (they follow the same patterns)

5. Key concepts unemployment work intensity low pay gender dynamics
Economic Activity
Unemployment
Employment
unemployment
work intensity
low pay
gender dynamics

6. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

7. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

8. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

9. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

10. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

11. Situation in the EU (2014, SILC)

12. Conclusions
At the EU level, we estimate that about 48.7% of disabled persons were employed compared to 72.5% of other persons in 2014.
The employment rate of disabled persons was about 23.8 percentage points lower than for other persons.
We need more current disability data, and more comparable data, to be collected and published in a similar way to gender employment statistics.
This type of data is also needed to monitor obligations under the CRPD.