A new study of the labour market in Canada conducted by Statistics Canada looks at labour market participation among persons with disabilities. It notes that several long-standing trends – that those with disabilities participate in the labour market less and earn less than those without disabilities – persisted throughout 2024.
Employment levels in 2024 dropped 0.7 per cent for both groups alike. The employment rate during the year was 46.4 per cent among persons with disabilities and 66.2 per cent among those without. Broken down, they say the employment rate declined 1.5 per cent to 54.7 per cent for persons with less severe disabilities and was little changed at 26.4 per cent for those with more severe disabilities.
The report, Labour market characteristics of persons with and without disabilities, 2024, continues, saying employed persons with disabilities were less likely to work in the financial services industry as well: “Similar to 2023, workers with disabilities continued to have a lower probability of working the relatively high-paying private sector,” the report states. The probability of a person without disabilities working in the finance, insurance and real estate industries is 7.6 per cent. This drops to just six per cent for those with disabilities.
“In all provinces, persons without disabilities continued to have a higher employment rate than persons with disabilities, with the largest gaps observed in Quebec and Ontario (21.3 percentage points in each), and the smallest gaps observed in Nova Scotia (16.6 percentage points) and Alberta (16.8 percentage points),” they write. “Employees with disabilities tend to have lower wages than employees without disabilities.”
On average, employees with disabilities earned 93.8 per cent of the average hourly wage of employees without disabilities in 2024. If average weekly earnings are measured, this gap is even wider, dropping to 91.2 per cent of the average.
More, they say since persons with disabilities are older on average, the difference in average wages may underestimate the wage penalty. “If the distribution of employees with disabilities by age group was the same as the age distribution of employees without disabilities, the average weekly wage of employees with disabilities would have been 89.2 per cent of the average weekly wage of employees without disabilities in 2024.”
