Occupation

Equality in employment: main results

	Persons with severe disabilities	Persons with disabilities (total)	Persons without disabilities
Activity rate (%) 1	51.0	73.1	87.8
Employed persons (%) 1	42.2	67.9	84.1
Employed persons: full-time (%) 1,2	32.5	50.4	63.3
Working conditions (average satisfaction) 3	7.6	7.7	8.0
Energy after work to do other things (average) 3	4.1	4.5	5.4
Discrimination at work due to a disability (%) 4	11.7	3.6	0.3

1 SILC 2021. Population aged 16 to 64 years living in a private household.
2 As % of employed persons. Full-time: 36 hours or more per week
3 SILC 2019. Population aged 16 to 64 years living in a private household. Average score on a scale of 0 (-) to 10 (+).
4 SHS 2017. Population aged 15 to 64 years living in a private household. As % of employed persons. All people are asked this question. For this reason persons without disabilities as under the Disability Discrimination Act can also indicate that they are discriminated against.
Sources: FSO – Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) and Swiss Health Survey (SHS)

Relevance to equality

Labour market participation plays a key role in the equality of people with disabilities, featuring prominently in the Disability Discrimination Act. This participation enables people with disabilities to earn a living by themselves, which is desirable in terms of their independence and dignity but also with regard to reducing the costs of social insurances.

In more general terms, this participation is also a way for people with disabilities to put to good use their skills and ability to work, to engage with other people, to create a social and professional identity and to fully take part in our society where adults’ social roles are mainly organised around productive and paid work.

This section deals with the overall participation of people with disabilities in the labour market (activity rate, unemployment and part-time employment), but also the type of jobs these people have access to (sheltered work, working conditions) including in terms of quality (quality of life at work).

Further information

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Statistical sources and concepts

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Definitions

The results on this page refer to persons with disabilities as under the Disability Discrimination Act (unless otherwise stated). The precise definition and the difference between other definitions of disability are shown in the persons with disabilities factsheet below.