The Labour Market Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals with Disabilities: The Case of Ireland

The COVID-19 health pandemic had a profound impact on economies and their labour markets worldwide. This included Ireland, with its labour market experiencing substantial increases in unemployment due to the implementation of a number of public health measures. The labour market disruptions caused by COVID-19 disproportionately affected certain sectors (accommodation, food services, etc.), and subgroups of the population (younger workers, women, non-Irish nationals, etc.). There is also reason to suspect that individuals with disabilities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. In general, prior to the pandemic, people with disabilities already faced significant labour market inequality in Ireland, with their employment rate being 33 per cent in 2019 compared to a rate of 51 per cent across the EU27, and 77 per cent for those without a disability in Ireland. Despite extensive research on the broader impacts of COVID-19, there remains a notable gap in the literature concerning the labour market impact of the health pandemic on people with disabilities. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature for Ireland by using data from the 2020 and 2023 Labour Force Survey (LFS) to examine the impact of COVID-19 on disabled peoples’ unemployment status relative to those without a disability. Using OLS and propensity score matching econometric techniques, the paper finds that individuals with disabilities were 2.7 percentage points more likely to be unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to those without disabilities. Even in 2023, people with disabilities remained more likely to be unemployed. However, our year interaction models revealed that the impact of disabilities on unemployment risk remained largely stable during and after the health pandemic. The paper also found some interesting results by disability type. The findings should help to provide policymakers with a clearer perspective on the effects of labour market disruptions on individuals with disabilities and identification of measures needed to support this subgroup of the population during labour market crises.