Mind the gap - we need to do more to close the disability employment gap

Disability employment gap statistics 2019

Viewpoint was founded as a social enterprise over 10 years ago to address the inequalities many face through disability or economic deprivation.

A recent government report ‘People with disabilities in employment.’ (Powell, October 2019) showed that although we’ve made some progress in the last 10 years, there’s still so much more to do.

“People with disabilities have an employment rate that is 28.9 percentage points lower than that of people without disabilities.

The unemployment rate for people with a disability was 7.3% in April-June 2019. This compared to an unemployment rate of 3.4% for people without disabilities.

People with disabilities are considerably more likely than those without disabilities to be economically inactive. 

Economic inactivity rate for those with disabilities was 43.3%, the corresponding figure for those without disabilities was 15.6%.

(House of Commons briefing paper ‘People with disabilities in employment’ April-June 2019) Download full report here PDF

Viewpoint’s mission is to provide enjoyable and sustainable jobs for people have previously faced challenges in the job market.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve played a small part in narrowing the gap, through our Viewpoint hubs in Sheffield, Doncaster and Leeds.

But we need to do more.

We are driven by the need to make an impact on the disappointing employment statistics from across the country for marginalised groups, and by using Viewpoint for your customer feedback surveys, so can you.

If you’re thinking of outsourcing tenant or customer satisfaction surveys, why not ask us for a quote?

We’re one of the top performers in the country, with a return rate of over 60% for tenant surveys. 

And the diversity of our researchers means we have a team as diverse as your customers are.

Thinking of setting up a social enterprise for your customers or town? We always welcome potential partners for our next Viewpoint hub.  

Please contact Alistair for a chat.