We often talk about inclusion in the workplace, accessibility, diversity and equal opportunities, but when it comes to the more practical aspects – such as pay, job responsibilities and career progression – the picture suddenly becomes less rosy. Disability is celebrated in panel discussions, corporate campaigns and sustainability reports, but in real life many people with disabilities still struggle to enter the job market, to stay there, to progress and to be paid for the value they bring.
The point is not simply to find a job; the point is to understand what kind of job, at what level, with what prospects and at what pay rate. A person with a disability may be formally employed, but remain stuck in low-skilled, dead-end roles designed more to ‘meet a quota’ than to make the most of their actual skills. And that is where the issue ceases to be merely a social one and becomes a fully economic one.
Internationally, the data is beginning to paint a clearer picture of this divide. According to a working paper by the International Labour Organization published in 2024, employed people with disabilities earn on average 12% less per hour than people without disabilities, and around 9 percentage points of this gap cannot be explained by factors such as education, age or type of work. A significant part of the gap, therefore, does not lie in the individual’s CV, but in the way the labour market selects, organises, evaluates and pays for work.
In Europe, the problem arises even before we get to the pay packet. The European Commission points out that only around half of people with disabilities are in employment, compared with around three in four of those without disabilities. So, even before we talk about pay, we must acknowledge a huge barrier to accessing work – a gap of around 25 percentage points that highlights the economic system’s difficulty in recognising non-standard skills.
For Italy, the situation is even more complex, as there is no official, stable and recognised indicator of the disability pay gap comparable to the one we are used to seeing for the gender pay gap. Istat provides data and sources on disability and employment, but the picture remains fragmented, with differing definitions and data sources that do not yet allow for a simple and consistent understanding of how much a person with a disability earns on average compared to a person without a disability under the same conditions. The absence of data, however, does not mean the problem does not exist; if anything, it means the problem is still being measured too little.
Meanwhile, we know that the Italian labour market is already marked by significant disparities. According to INPS, in 2024 the average annual pay for private-sector employees stands at €24,486, with significant variations by gender, region, job title, days worked and type of contract. This figure does not measure the disability pay gap, but it reminds us that talking about wages in Italy means entering a system already riddled with fractures, where those starting from a more vulnerable position are more likely to end up in the lowest-paid and least-protected segments.
The easiest interpretation would be to say that disability makes people less productive, but it is also the most mistaken. The problem lies in a labour market that often confines people with disabilities to lower-level, less skilled roles, with fewer opportunities for advancement and greater distance from decision-making processes. The pay gap arises before the pay slip; it arises in access, in training, in recruitment, in a lack of reasonable adjustments, in stalled careers, in the tasks assigned and those never offered.
This point should be of great interest to the business world, because if a person with a disability is hired merely to fulfil a legal obligation – without the role being properly designed, without training the team, without adapting tools and processes, and without measuring results and skills – that person risks being relegated to a marginal position. At that point, their salary does not reflect their value; rather, it reflects the limitations of an organisation that has failed to create the conditions for them to flourish.
There is also another common misconception to dispel: the idea that hiring a person with a disability automatically costs more. Provided the national collective agreement, job grade, gross annual salary, working hours and role are the same, the basic cost of an employee with a disability is the same as that of an employee without a disability, because the structure remains the same: gross annual salary, employer’s social security contributions, INAIL insurance, severance pay, tools, and any benefits and corporate welfare schemes.
In some cases, the cost may also be reduced thanks to the incentives provided for under Law 68/1999. The Fund for the Right to Work of People with Disabilities provides incentives amounting to 70% of the gross monthly taxable salary for the permanent recruitment of people with a reduction in working capacity of more than 79%, 35% for people with a reduction of between 67% and 79%, and 70% for people with an intellectual or mental disability with a reduction of more than 45%, for a period of up to 60 months in the case of permanent employment.
This point needs to be made clear, as it is a sensitive one. It is not a discount on the individual; it is a form of public support designed to facilitate access to employment and to correct a market that has historically excluded, marginalised or undervalued people with disabilities. The incentive should not serve to make a person ‘cost-effective’; it should serve to make it easier for the company to do what it should already have learnt to do, namely to design accessible work.
Then there are reasonable adjustments, which are often portrayed as extraordinary costs, as if they were always complex and costly measures. Sometimes they can be, of course, because they require aids, software, assistive technologies, dedicated workstations or modifications to the workspace, but very often an adjustment simply involves smart organisation, flexible working hours, hybrid working, clearer procedures, digital tools that are already available, and more accessible ways of communicating. In many cases, it is not the disability that costs money; it is the company that was never designed to accommodate real differences.
The question then becomes a more uncomfortable one: if incentives exist, if the basic cost for the same role remains unchanged, and if many adjustments are sustainable or already available, why does the market continue to treat disability as a problem to be managed rather than a skill to be valued? The answer lies in organisational culture. Too many companies continue to confuse inclusion with integration, because integration means finding a desk, a contract and a job role, whereas inclusion means creating an environment in which that person can grow, contribute, be assessed and even aspire to earn more.
If a person with a disability enters the labour market and remains stuck in low-skilled roles, if they do not have access to training, if they are not considered for career progression, and if the company views them more as a formality than as an investment, their salary does not really increase; and when their salary does not increase, their independence does not increase either.
The disability pay gap does not reflect the value of people with disabilities. It measures the extent to which the labour market is still unable to recognise skills when faced with non-standard bodies, working hours and ways of working. It is a mirror, not a condemnation, and for this very reason it should be of interest to entrepreneurs, HR professionals, start-ups, investors and policy makers, because every unrecognised skill is wasted productivity, every stalled career is idle human capital, and every denied accommodation is lost organisational innovation.
The bottom line is simple and not very reassuring: it doesn’t cost more to hire a person with a disability; it costs more to keep designing workplaces that aren’t accessible. It costs in terms of productivity, reputation, staff turnover, a lack of innovation, the loss of talent, and an inability to tap into wider markets. For the same role, a person with a disability is not an extra cost; they only become an extra cost when the company has never invested in accessibility, organisation and workplace culture. And as long as we continue to talk about inclusion without also talking about salaries, career progression and economic power, we will continue to tell a convenient part of the story, leaving out the part that truly changes people’s lives. (photo by Raj Tuladhar on Unsplash)
The author is president of LADI, the Free Association of Disabled Entrepreneurs
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