New report highlights employment, income, and accessibility barriers for Canadians with disabilities
Statistics Canada has released new findings from the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) in support of National AccessAbility Week.
The report, “A demographic, employment and income profile of persons with disabilities aged 15 years and over in Canada, 2022,” provides an overview of disability characteristics among Canadians aged 15 years and older.
It also offers insights into the employment experiences, income, and poverty levels of persons with disabilities, highlighting unmet needs for disability supports due to cost.
Additionally, Statistics Canada introduced a new data visualization tool, “Barriers to accessibility among persons with disabilities in Canada,” which allows users to interactively view data on accessibility barriers from the 2022 CSD.
The report reveals that persons with mild disabilities are more likely to be employed than those with severe disabilities. According to the 2022 CSD, 62 percent of adults aged 25 to 64 years with disabilities had lower employment rates compared to 78 percent of those without disabilities.
Employment rates decrease as the severity of disability increases. Furthermore, among employed persons aged 25 to 64 years, those with disabilities (16 percent) are more likely to work part-time (fewer than 30 hours per week) than their counterparts without disabilities (13 percent).
The report identifies that over 741,000 persons with disabilities have the potential for paid employment in an inclusive labour market. The concept of work potential considers how many persons with disabilities could be employed within an accessible and accommodating labour market.
For example, persons with disabilities who are not working by choice but plan to seek employment or those who could work if appropriate workplace accommodations were available are considered to have work potential.
Among persons with disabilities aged 25 to 64 years who were not employed in 2022, 42 percent (or 741,280 persons) could be classified as having work potential.
The report also highlights the proportion of youth with disabilities neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET). Among youth with disabilities, 17 percent of those aged 15 to 24 years were NEET in 2022.
Youth with more severe disabilities (28 percent) were more than twice as likely to be NEET compared to those with milder disabilities (12 percent). In contrast, 11 percent of all youth aged 15 to 24 years were NEET in 2022, according to the Labour Force Survey.
Persons with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than those without disabilities.
The 2022 CSD indicates that 10 percent of persons with disabilities aged 15 years and older lived below the poverty line, compared to 7 percent of those without disabilities, based on the Market Basket Measure poverty thresholds.
Persons with severe disabilities (13 percent) were more likely to live below the poverty line than those with milder disabilities (7 percent).
The CSD provides information on the needs for various disability supports and barriers to accessing those supports.
In 2022, more than half (56 percent; nearly 4.5 million people) of persons with disabilities reported having at least one unmet need for aids, devices, medication, or healthcare services.
Cost was cited as the reason for unmet needs by nearly three-quarters (73 percent; 3.2 million people) of persons with disabilities. Severity of disability affects the likelihood of unmet needs due to cost.
Among persons with milder disabilities, 32 percent had at least one unmet need for an aid, device, prescription medication, or healthcare service due to cost, while more than half (53 percent) of persons with severe disabilities had at least one such unmet need.
The new data visualization tool allows users to explore data on the 27 types of barriers to accessibility by disability type, severity, age group, gender, and geography.
The initial results of the 2022 CSD showed that 72 percent of persons with disabilities experienced one or more barriers to accessibility due to their condition at least sometimes in the year prior to the survey.
