Where will political parties find jobs for disabled people?

[wheretoyougonow]

Firstly I would like to state that this is absolutely not a thread about benefits and I don’t want it to descend into one. There are plenty of other threads discussing this.

There is a huge political push to get disabled people into the workforce. I honestly would love to know where these jobs will actually be. There are just under 5 million people under 65 that currently do not work due to disability in England and Wales. Let’s say out of those people the government criteria means 1 million people are deemed to be able to join the workforce. Where? Not in my county. The job market is VERY competitive and there are a distinct lack of jobs in my town and nearest city. In my community these experiences are very common:
16 year olds unable to find traditional Saturday jobs
18 year old unable to get apprenticeships
Young adults who did well/not as well in education unable to find full time employment
Middle aged people, who were made redundant, unable to find a job
Older people unable to retire due to costs of living (meaning there is a decrease in job opportunities- not a criticism of the people working)

Most job adverts are closing early due to the amount of applicants.

Where are these jobs going to come from and please can you get some for the list above whilst you’re at it!!

I don't think they care whether they have jobs or not - they just want to pay them less in benefits and aren't bothered about the outcomes for them. So people will be forced to live on £400 a month or whatever the rate is for a non-disabled person but it will be for their whole life and they may have to spend all of their waking hours on applications for jobs they know they will never get or be capable of doing or on some sort of community service to even be allowed that amount. You are right, the jobs aren't there.

@deepersleeper thank you for responding. It’s so frustrating to hear politicians making plans when the job opportunities just don’t add up.

Thatcher was the one who started transferring people from unemployment benefits to disability benefits to disguise rising unemployment way back in the 80s. To be fair, a lot of people had long term health problems and did qualify but probably just hadn't realised they did. Nobody was looking at the disability stats back then and the focus was very much on unemployment. Now that unemployment has fallen off people's radar they're trying to push people back in the other direction. It's a farce.

Yeah try having a disability and a job. The reasonable adjustments I fought for come with the caveat of secrecy "in case someone else thinks you're getting something they aren't" and god forbid you mention or look disabled in a job interview!
It's almost impossible to get a job with a fatigue based disability because you need wfh and it to be very flexible.
I always think if employers don't want disabled people in the workforce fine, we should all quit, but that means we need a UBI from the government.
Sometimes it feels gov policies just exist to hasten our demise so we arent a problem any more.
Being disabled sucks, ableism is everywhere. It's hard not to feel like a burden on the state, your family, the nhs, when everyone is constantly telling you that you are.
Rant over!!!!

Yep, and then in the early 2000s/2010s this morphed into pushing the long term unemployed/unemployable into "self employment" under the working tax credit system. Got them off the unemployment figures, they could work a manageable amount and still got topped up by reasonably generous benefits, and everyone was happy. Except then UC came in, with much stricter conditionality, and there was a crackdown on the low income self employed. This has pushed many of them into having to claim disability benefits in order to have the strict conditionality taken off their UC claim - these are people who aren't ever going to be able to work a 40 hour week consistently but could muddle along working as and when under the old tax credits system.

Basically the same old story of the vulnerable being used as political footballs 😟

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Interesting to read what’s been done before.
I would still love to know where these jobs are going to magically appear seeing as the job market at the moment is so bad.

Unnecessary presenteeism attendance in an office on a 9-5 does not help at all when it comes to those with some disabilities.

Honestly I have no idea. Employers will say oh we have 6 months paid sick leave then fire you when you take 3 days off I'll in 12 months...

I struggle to believe that there can really be 5 million people under the age of 65 who cannot work due to disability. That is 1 in 7 of adults of working age.

Which I think is where political parties challenging the scale / extent of/ growth of these benefits are coming from - it’s not sustainable to pay benefits to this number of people to not work, but it also just seems… somewhat unlikely?

There are of course people with disabilities too severe to work, where working full time is difficult, where finding employment will be hard etc etc - but 5 million of them?

If you are on benefits and disabled, then what is being discussed on what it seems every fucking radio station and channel, is bloody depressing right now.

Right now - 2.4 jobseekers (that is people on UC looking for work) to every vacancy (which could be a 4 hour per week zero hour role - no one is going to come off benefits for that).

You are exactly right. There are not enough jobs for people who are looking and able.

What is your solution then?
Chuck them off of sickness benefits and on to job seekers? Which is not enough to live on, and will just make them more ill and back on to sickness benefits.
Where are the jobs for people who have been out for the workforce for years, even decades?

Our Labour Force Participation rate is actually very high by historical standards - we don't have vastly fewer people working than at any point in the past - it's just different people who aren't working. I think part of the the difference is that whereas many people might have been supported by a spouse in the past and not had to claim due to lower costs of living etc, this is no longer the case and people who would never have worked but might not have claimed are now both not working and claiming.

That doesn’t really answer the question of ‘do we really have 5 million people unable to work due to disability’.

Regardless of whether or not the percentage of workless adults has increased or decreased - it’s the cost to the state that is ultimately the problem.

if they have been assessed as unable to work, then yes, there are 5 million people that have been deemed as unable to work.

Head in the sand as to the scale of the problem I’m afraid - the welfare state cannot afford to fund such huge numbers of workless adults.

We either fix it, so it can continue to support people who genuinely need help - or the whole thing will collapse under the weight of demand leaving those in genuine need in a bad situation.

1 in 7 adults isn’t so disabled they can’t work - do you truly believe that?

This isn’t ’an attack on the disabled’, it’s a challenge to a welfare state that has for some reason become bloated and unaffordable. Do you recognise the threat of the cost becoming so large it is unaffordable, more unaffordable than today?

Just to reiterate- I wasn’t asking whether people should be living off benefits I want to know how on earth people will get a job when there are people, right now, wanting a job and can’t get one. Where are these jobs going to come from?

If the DWP have deemed that many people to be unable to work (and you go through assessments and have to provide evidence), then what makes you think you know better?
We did go through a massive event in 2020 that rendered a lot of people disabled.

What do you think should happen to all the disabled people that you think could work? Like I said in a previous post, living in poverty would make them more ill and back on sickness benefits again.

The biggest welfare cost is pensions. Another huge cost is housing.

Yes. We had a massive disabling event 6 years ago. The nhs isn't giving people the treatment they need. People are waiting years for surgery. Upfs, microplastics casuing non-communicable diseases. I can fully believe 1 in 7 people are disabled which affects their work.
For eg, you wouldn't know i am disabled if you saw me on the street, but I am significantly disabled which impacts my quality of life and ability to look after myself.
And anyway, are you positing we chuck people off benefits and then magically they'll be ok and able to work?
Nobody would choose this life. Trust me.

Yes, the simple fact is there are not enough jobs to go round for people who can work right now.
Able bodied/minded people who can work have a huge head start compared to disabled people. What employer is going to take on someone who is going to be unreliable due to health, maybe even aggressive in the workplace due to MH, and need time off for appointments and sickness?

I'm afraid you're wasting your breath with that poster. Chronically sick and disabled benefits claimants are the low-hanging fruit for the continuing programme of austerity, and those ideologically captured by it will have their scapegoats and pounds of flesh.

Given society doesn’t see keeping pavements clear of parked cars to enable those with mobility needs to travel to work safely, can’t see there’s an impetus to create an accessible paid work opportunities.

Look at the number of SEND schools being opened.

These are the people who won’t be able to work or never work unsupported.

There is an increase in the number of people living with severe disability with medical advances .

There is an increase in severe disability and genetic disorders and also non verbal disability.

I’ve worked in SEN ed for over 20 years. The students coming through school now are so different to the ones we had 20 years ago.

I will try and dig it up, but I read that if you did a job search for WFH, the "tick box" of disability friendly, and something else (I will have a look), there was a grand total of 25 vacancies in the whole of the UK.

I did one in scotland recently and there were about 16 in the entire country

You don't think retirement age has risen, that in past decades premature babies who might have died have been saved with injuries, that older parents may have a disabled child, cancer has risen, long covid...there are lots of reasons for increased disability in the working age population or current generations