The Economics of Inclusion
Fiscal analysis, policy research, and expert perspectives on the economic case for work inclusion.
Research Segments
Labour Exclusion
True labour market exclusion across Europe — beyond the headline unemployment rate
Fiscal Cost of Exclusion
What it costs the state in disability and sickness benefits when people are kept out of work, compared across European countries.
Inclusion ventures
Startups and companies whose business is getting disabled, neurodivergent and other excluded people into work — how they developed, what they measure, and where they struggled.
Investing in inclusion
The investors, funds and public schemes that finance companies getting excluded people into work, the instruments they use, and how they measure success.
European Union
Proof It Works
Real organisations already doing this — the employers and public programmes behind the numbers.
The world's largest autistic-majority company started in Oslo
79% of 552 staff are autistic · 266 client companies in 2023
Learn moreSweden's biggest employer built entirely around disabled workers
24,000+ employees — all with disabilities · Operating since 1980
Learn more107,000 people in paid work — thanks to a Danish wage subsidy
107,000 people in Fleksjob · Record high in 2023
Learn moreMercedes-Benz employs nearly 9,000 people with disabilities across its group companies
~9,000 employees with disabilities · 100+ trainees with disabilities over 5 years
Learn moreThe tech company that decided the interview was the real problem
215+ autistic employees · Program active in 16 countries
Learn moreNorway's largest business confederation ran an inclusion programme with an 80% job-offer rate
80% of internship participants offered a job · covers 22,000+ NHO member companies
Learn moreA 750-member Dutch employer network making inclusive hiring the new normal since 2016
750+ member employers · operating since 2016 · spans SMEs to large corporates
Learn moreIKEA turns refugee employment into a global model
3,700+ refugees supported · 70% went on to find employment
Learn moreShe asked 500 CEOs to stop hiding disability from the boardroom. They said yes.
500 global companies committed · $23 trillion combined market cap · 20 million employees covered
Learn morePoland's national fund subsidises wages for 240,000 disabled workers at open-market employers
240,000+ workers with disabilities on wage subsidy · 30,000+ contributing employers
Learn moreLatest Analysis
Read full report →Built on inclusion: what the numbers say about auticon, Specialisterne, Nyby and the investors behind them
Two new InkludX sections profile companies whose business is getting excluded people into work, and the capital that funds them — setbacks included.
Members, not patients: how the Clubhouse model grew from one New York house to 370 Clubhouses in 32 countries
Born in New York in 1948, the Clubhouse model now spans 370 Clubhouses in 32 countries — with Europe its largest region outside the US. Here's how its route back to paid work operates, and what the evidence really says.
Europe's Missing Workers: Who Is Outside the EU Labour Market
Beyond the official unemployment rate, millions more Europeans are outside the labour market. In 2024, Eurostat counted 13.1 million unemployed people in the EU, plus 6.2 million who were available to work but not looking, and 8.0 million young people aged 15–29 who were not in employment, education or training.
Individual Placement and Support: The Most Evidence-Based Employment Intervention in Mental Health
IPS has the strongest evidence base of any employment intervention for people with severe mental illness: 28 randomised controlled trials, with meta-analyses finding that people in IPS are about twice as likely to get a competitive job as those in traditional vocational rehabilitation. Trials in Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark show it also works in generous welfare states. Yet European implementation remains uneven.
All pieces
Read full report →Designing Disability Insurance Reforms: Tightening Eligibility Rules or Reducing Benefits?
Using a sufficient-statistics framework for the welfare effects of disability insurance, applied to two restrictive DI reforms in Austria, this Econometrica paper finds that tighter eligibility rules triggered higher fiscal cost savings and lower insurance losses, so tighter eligibility rules dominate benefit reductions in scaling back the Austrian DI system.
Disability, Work and Inclusion: Mainstreaming in All Policies and Practices
OECD review from 2022 finding that disability employment and poverty gaps remain high: the employment rate of people with disability is 27 percentage points lower than for people without disability, a gap that has remained constant over the past decade, and one in four people with disability live in households with incomes below 60% of the median, compared to one in seven people without disability.
Voices & Authors
View all voices →Politicians, economists, advocates, and authors shaping the economics of work inclusion
Angelina Atanasova
Research Support Officer, Working Life Unit
Eurofound (EU Agency), Dublin
Research support officer in Eurofound's Working Life unit, working on social dialogue, industrial relations and disability rights. Her 2023 ETUI policy brief, written at the European Social Observatory, drew on Eurostat data showing an EU disability employment gap of 21.4 percentage points in 2022 (from 8.5pp in Luxembourg to 37pp in Ireland) and called for better data collection, social-partner engagement and gender mainstreaming. Holds a PhD in EU law from KU Leuven.
Anne Skevik Grødem
Research Professor
NOVA / OsloMet
Research Professor at NOVA, OsloMet, and one of the OsloMet researchers who contributed to the 2025 government-commissioned review of Norway's health-related benefits (sickness benefits, work assessment allowance and disability benefit). Her research spans pensions, older workers and late-career transitions, and welfare policy, including a current knowledge synthesis on sick-leave schemes and return to work.
Bernd Fitzenberger
Director
IAB — Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Nuremberg
Director of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the research institute of Germany's Federal Employment Agency, since 2019, and Professor of Quantitative Labour Economics at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has written on Germany's labour shortages, including how they coexist with registered unemployment and a large 'silent reserve' of people outside the labour force.
Catherine Naughton
Director
European Disability Forum (EDF), Brussels
Director of the European Disability Forum (EDF), the umbrella organisation of representative organisations of persons with disabilities in Europe. She has an academic background in public health and 25 years of experience in the field of disability, with a focus on disability-inclusive international development, and was Vice President of Social Platform (2017–2023).
Ed Miliband
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs
UK Government / Labour Party
Labour cabinet minister; Energy Secretary 2024–2026 and Foreign Secretary since July 2026. In March 2025, as the government announced its welfare reform package, he was reported to be among cabinet ministers who had privately voiced concerns about the planned disability benefit cuts.
Editorial content — not peer reviewed
Frances Ryan
Journalist, Author, Disability Columnist
The Guardian (UK)
Guardian columnist, author and activist for disabled people. Author of 'Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People' (Verso, 2019), which explored the impact of the UK austerity programme on disabled people. Won Commentator of the Year (Broadsheet) at the Society of Editors' Media Freedom Awards 2024.
Editorial content — not peer reviewed
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