Access to Employment for People with Disabilities Results of a Correspondence Study.

We estimate the extent of unequal treatment of people with disabilities in the recruitment process. We use a correspondence testing method, which allows us to examine employers’ behaviour under real-world labour market conditions. As part of the study, we sent 1,046 fictitious job applications in response to real job advertisements. The job candidates had identical work experience and qualifications and differed only in whether they disclosed a disability – one of the candidates used a wheelchair.
Among applications submitted by candidates without disabilities, between 10.5% and 15.1% received a positive response from employers, depending on the definition of a positive response used. By contrast, the corresponding share among applications submitted by candidates with disabilities ranged from 7.1% to 11.1%. The differences amounted to 3.4 and 4 percentage points, respectively. Thus, applications submitted by candidates with disabilities received positive responses less often than those submitted by candidates without disabilities. In relative terms, the rates of positive responses were 32.4% – 26.5% lower. We observed the opposite pattern for negative responses: applications submitted by candidates with disabilities more often received a negative response than those submitted by candidates without disabilities (5.2% vs. 3.1%).
Our study shows that unequal treatment in the recruitment process constitutes a significant barrier, limiting the employment opportunities of people with disabilities.