The labor market forgets a group with significant potential

inclusion

The integration of people with disabilities needs more support from companies.

(Photo: dpa)

Dusseldorf Germany is graying rapidly – and this will soon also be reflected in the labor market and will not remain without consequences for economic growth. Employment should already peak in 2023; henceforth more people will leave working life than new ones.

From 2026, Germany will lose an estimated 130,000 people of working age every year – and a lower supply of jobs will weaken potential production. “At the end of this decade it could be that economic growth can no longer be taken for granted,” warns Bert Rürup, President of the Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI).

The usual recommendations from academia to counteract this development are to increase immigration and the participation rate, i.e. to enable more women, in particular, to work full-time through better childcare options, all-day schools and more flexible working time models.

A pool of labor that is still often overlooked is people with disabilities. Of the approximately 1.45 million people with a disability who are available to the primary labor market, 166,500 are currently unemployed – almost one in nine, as the new labor inclusion barometer of Aktion Mensch and HRI shows. Compared to the previous year, the number of unemployed fell slightly by 7,000 people, but compared to the pre-crisis year 2019, unemployment was almost 13,000 higher.

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“Overall, the level of inclusion in the labor market is at the level of 2016. Since the situation improved almost steadily in the years before Corona, this means: All progress made since then has been lost,” emphasizes HRI President Rürup.

The experiences from past economic crises are repeated

In fact, the German labor market weathered the pandemic quite well. In spring 2020, unemployment soared by a good 600,000 within a few weeks. But since then it has been falling continuously, so that it is now only 200,000 people above the pre-crisis level.

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The labor market for people with disabilities was also able to benefit from the recovery, although unemployment among the severely disabled fell much more slowly. This means that the experiences from past economic crises seem to be repeating themselves, in which the number of long-term unemployed people with disabilities increased noticeably. “In order to promote inclusion in the labor market, we therefore not only need a change in awareness, but also greater support for companies in setting up workplaces that are suitable for people with disabilities,” said HRI study author Jörg Lichter.

In particular, medium-sized companies often do not know that there is technical support for the new and redesign of workplaces. In addition, companies could receive specific investment grants.

Ideally, companies should not only try to gain accessibility because of new hires, but rather improve the structural framework for the recruitment of people with disabilities as a preventive measure, recommends Christina Marx from Aktion Mensch. For example, structural accessibility for new buildings or renovations or digital accessibility when purchasing hardware or software should already be taken into account.

In addition, accessibility not only creates the prerequisite for people with disabilities to be able to work in a company. In view of the aging workforce, all employees ultimately benefit from a barrier-free work environment. “In addition, accessibility can be decisive in the competition for aging customers in order to stand out from the competition, for example in stationary retail or in the hospitality industry,” emphasizes HRI expert Lichter. “Accessibility often pays off from a business point of view.”

More: The Federal Employment Agency apparently needs a financial injection of 18.3 billion euros in 2021

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