UK study exposes widespread hiring bias against disabled job applicants

A new study reveals employer discrimination in hiring between disabled and non-disabled job applicants in the UK.

Cardiff University, University of Liverpool, and Thames Water conducted a large-scale study in five British cities from October 2022 to July 2023.

They applied to over 4000 job vacancies using fictitious job applications, where some applicants were indicated as using a wheelchair (suggesting a mobility disability) while others were not. These applications targeted two types of jobs - accountants and financial accounts assistants - and were assessed to have no direct impact on worker performance.

Key findings from the study

Hiring discrimination

Significant discrimination against disabled applicants was found with disabled candidates having a 15% lower callback rate compared to non-disabled candidates. The discrimination was stronger for the less skilled financial accounts assistant role, where the gap was 21%.

Occupational variation

No discrimination was found for certified accountant roles, potentially reflecting high demand in this occupation during the study period.

Productivity signals

The study tested whether improving a disabled applicant's qualifications (through better education, skills, or references) would reduce the gap. Surprisingly, these signals did not reduce discrimination. They often widened the gap by disproportionately benefiting non-disabled candidates, suggesting taste-based discrimination arising from prejudice, not from concerns about productivity.

The study also explored variations in discrimination based on the job type and employer characteristics:

Teamwork and customer-facing jobs

Jobs requiring teamwork or direct customer interaction showed worse discrimination, possibly due to employers anticipating prejudice from co-workers or customers.

Equal opportunity policies

No significant reduction in discrimination was found for employers advertising as ‘equal opportunities’ or those involved in the Government’s Disability Confident Accreditation Scheme, raising questions about the effectiveness of these initiatives.

Remote working

Remote job opportunities did not show smaller disability-related hiring gaps, raising questions about the ability of remote work to address disability employment disparities.

Read the full paper: Productivity Signals and Disability- Related Hiring Discrimination: Evidence from a Field Experiment (iza.org)

This project is based on data collection supported by Cardiff University (Innovation for All) Research Funding and Pump Priming funding from the University of Liverpool Management School.