Inclusion: People with disabilities have a difficult time in the job market

According to a study, the situation of people with disabilities in the labor market has worsened. From this group, 177,280 people were unemployed in Germany in October, seven percent more than a year earlier, according to a study by the Handelsblatt Research Institute and the Aktion Mensch association. The economic crisis is accompanied by a significant step backwards for people with disabilities in terms of equal opportunities, said Aktion Mensch spokeswoman Christina Marx.

The situation had already worsened last year: According to the information, in 2023 the unemployment rate for people with severe disabilities was on average 11 percent, 0.2 percentage points higher than in 2022. An estimated 46,000 employers did not have severely disabled employees, even though they should have had them – that was 1,000 more than a year earlier.

Employers with 20 or more employees are obliged to employ severely disabled people – according to the information, that’s around 179,000 companies in Germany. If an employer does not meet the mandatory quota of five percent, he must pay a compensatory levy for each unfilled compulsory job.

Many companies leave positions unfilled

According to the information, the proportion of companies that filled all mandatory positions was only 38.5 percent in 2023, 0.5 percentage points lower than a year earlier. This is an all-time low, says Aktion Mensch with concern. The study called the Inclusion Barometer has been published every year since 2013 and is based primarily on figures from the Federal Employment Agency. Most disabilities develop over the course of life; only three percent are congenital.

The private sector employs relatively few people with disabilities. Aktion Mensch spokeswoman Marx reacts by shaking her head. “A poor economy doesn’t go far enough as an explanation – after all, the economy is increasingly complaining about a shortage of skilled workers and a shortage of workers in general.” But companies do not fill the jobs with the many well-qualified employees with disabilities, Marx complains.

Significantly more layoffs

It is also critical that companies have laid off their severely disabled employees more frequently than before. While the integration office received around 17,000 terminations in 2022, there were already around 21,000 in 2023. If a company terminates a person with a disability, they must have applied for this to the office. In order for the termination to be valid, the approval of the office is necessary. Beforehand, it is checked whether continued employment is possible, for example with government subsidies.

According to the information, there are 3.1 million people in Germany with a severe disability who are between 15 and 65 years old – i.e. at an age at which they could work. Around 1.1 million of these people are employed by companies that have at least 20 employees.

It is estimated that around 200,000 people with disabilities work for smaller companies. According to Aktion Mensch, minus young people who are still going to school and older people who are already in early retirement, there are around 1.6 million people with severe disabilities who are not integrated into the labor market.