Employment and disability - Avoiding a one-way street

Chronic illness and disability play a key role in unemployment and exclusion from the workplace. When reading about ‘people with disabilities’, most people think of people born with an obvious disability or who have acquired a disability through illness or injury later in life. However, in relation to the labour market, the term refers to people who have previously worked but are now receiving disability benefits due to long absence from work. They have lost connection with their employer and are claiming either short term sickness benefit or longer-term disability benefit. Most of them have acquired their disability during their working life.