Employment for people with disability in Australia

1. Overview

This factsheet provides information on:

• disability in Australia
• disability and education in Australia
• the employment of people with disability in Australia
• employment and disability discrimination in Australia.

2. Disability in Australia

There are 4.4 million people with disability in Australia, comprising 17.7% of the population.^[1] The prevalence of disability is similar for males (17.6%) and females (17.8%).^[2]

In Australia:

• 16.5% of adults with disability live in poverty compared to 10.6% of adults without a disability^[3]
• people with disability make up 37.9% of the population living in poverty (despite only making up 18% of the overall population).^[4]

Over a third of people with disability of working age (15-64 years) rely on a government pension or allowance as their main source of income.^[5]

3. Disability and education in Australia

Approximately 10% of Australian school students aged 5–18 years have a disability, and most (89%) attend a mainstream school.^[6]

For all Australians with disability aged 20 years and over:

• around 1 in 3 (34%) have completed Year 12 or equivalent^[8]

For all Australians without disability aged 20 years and over:

• around 2 in 3 (66%) have completed Year 12 or equivalent^[9]
• close to 35% have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher.^[10]

It is important to note, however, that the above statistics differ considerably when focusing on recent school leavers. Of those aged 20–24 years with a disability, 68% have completed Year 12 or equivalent compared with 85% of young people without a disability.^[11]

Around 7.3% of new university enrolments in 2018 were comprised of people with a disability. This percentage is steadily increasing each year. Since 2012, Australian university enrolments from people with a disability have increased by 64.9%, compared with general enrolment growth of 18.6%.^[12]

As of 2019, 67% of undergraduates with a disability were employed full-time, compared with 73% of undergraduates without a disability.^[13]

4. Employment of people with disability

The labour force participation rate^[14] for people with disability aged 15–64 years is 53.4%, compared to 84.1% of people the same age without disability.^[15]

The labour force participation rate for people with disability has remained largely unchanged from 2003 (53%) to 2018 (53.4%).^[16] In contrast, the labour force participation rate for people without disability increased from 63.6% (2003) to 84.1% (2018).^[17]

In summary, the labour force participation rate has remained relatively unchanged for people with disability over the last 20 years.^[18]

In Australia, for people with disability of working age (15–64 years) in the labour force:

• close to 59.1% are employed on a full-time basis, compared to 68.3% of people without disability^[19]
• approximately 40.9% are employed on a part-time basis, compared to 31.7% of people without disability.^[20]

5. Employment and disability discrimination

In the most recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nearly half (45.2%) of all employed people with disability reported that they had experienced unfair treatment or discrimination from their employer due to their disability in the past 12 months.^[21]

In 2019–2020, the Australian Human Rights Commission (the Commission) received a total of 2,307 complaints.^[22] Consistent with previous years, the main areas of public life raised by complainants were employment and access to the provision of goods, services and facilities.^[23] Almost half (44%) of these complaints were made under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth), with close to a third (30%) of these complaints relating to employment.^[24]