Care to Compete: Corporate Policies and Practices on Care and Support for Employees with Disabilities and Employees with Dependants with Disabilities
ILO Global Business and Disability Network report (October 2025) on how multinational companies support employees with disabilities and employees caring for dependants with disabilities. It links disability-inclusive care and support policies to job satisfaction, retention and productivity, but finds low employee awareness of these policies and uneven application across regions.
Working from Home Boosted Growth by Expanding Disability Employment
CEPR VoxEU column by Nicholas Bloom, Gordon Dahl and Dan-Olof Rooth (May 2025): working from home has already increased full-time disability employment in the US by over a quarter of a million people. Wages of employees with a disability fell, suggesting labour supply is the dominant driving force, and hybrid and fully remote working could increase labour supply in North America by perhaps a million or more, with similar gains possible in Europe.
Global Economics of Disability Report: 2024
Market-sizing report by consultancy The Return on Disability Group (September 2024). It applies age- and gender-specific disability rates from Statistics Canada's 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability to population data and estimates that disabled people aged 25–64 in Canada, the EU, UK and US have over $2.6 trillion in disposable income, $1.3 trillion of it in the US. These are modelled estimates, not measured spending.
Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent
Harvard Business School and Accenture study (2021) of 'hidden workers' — people who want work, including caregivers, those with physical disabilities and those without traditional qualifications, but are kept out by barriers such as inflexibly configured automated recruiting systems like applicant tracking systems. It estimates more than 27 million hidden workers in the US, with similar proportions in the UK and Germany.
The Disability Inclusion Imperative
Accenture research (2023) with Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities, based on approximately 346 companies in the US Disability Equality Index between 2015 and 2022, found that companies that led on key disability inclusion criteria realised 1.6x more revenue, 2.6x more net income and 2x more economic profit than other participants, and were 25% more likely to outperform industry peers on productivity (revenue per employee).
Workplace Accommodations: Low Cost, High Impact
JAN surveyed employers who contacted it between 2019 and 2024. 61% said their accommodations cost nothing to implement, and 33% had a one-time expense with a median cost of $300. The most-reported benefits were increased employee retention (85%) and productivity (52%).