Breaking through?

Highly qualified people with disabilities facing the labour marked

Fafo-report 2008:41

Inger Lise Skog Hansen and Kaja Reegård

This report addresses the experiences of highly qualified persons with disabilities trying to enter or reenter the Norwegian labour market. The report is based on a survey among 118 highly educated persons  with disabilities who applied for participation in a specific trainee program for disabled people in the the national public administration spring 2008. It was in total 186 applicants for the trainee program, and 19 got a job. The survey was carried out in late spring 2008, and at that time 61 percent of the earlier appliers were in employment, one third of them  in some kind of labour market programmes.  Fifty percent of the respondents were still seeking jobs, some of these had applied for more than 100 jobs during the last 12 months. There were 15 persons who were neither employd or seeking jobs.

The category visual impaired / blind, hard of hearing / deaf and wheelchair users totally constitute less than 20 percent of the respondents. The category other physical impairments around one forth of the sample. The largest specified category is persons having different kind of mental health problems, which constiute close to 30 percent of the applicants.

An interesting finding in the report is that the specific trainee program has mobilised some persons that are not ordinary active in seeking jobs. The trainee-program has been considered as a possibility to enter the labour marked for persons that experience getting into consideration for jobs are not easy. The trainee-program has not only appealed to persons that are trying to enter the labour marked after finishing their education, but just as many persons trying to reenter the labour marked after a period of sicknessleave, rehabilitation or unemployment.

Education has a strong positive effect on employment – yet this report finds that highly qualified persons with disabilities struggle to overcome different kinds of barriers and negative ideas about disabled  when trying to get a job. What these barriers consist of, is complex, but  the survey reveals experiences with repeatedly rejected job applications, problems concerning workplace adjustments, lack of personal network,lack of  relevant part time jobs and difficulties in balancing the significance of the impairment in the jobseeking processes. The respondents report different persononal strategies for whether being open about their disability or not. One motivation for not being open is the assumption that this will lead to a negative assessment by the employer. The majority of the respondents belive that impairments limit the possibilities at the labour marked, and severeal of the respondents believe that impairments overshadow the relevance of their education.  In addition the survey revealed  the importance of personal engagemennt in trying to enter the labour market. Many of the respondents report personal engagement as the single most important factor in trying to get a job.