What percentage of the population of Australia are disabled people who
could be gainfully employed?

< In 1998, 3.6 million people had a disability (18% of the
population). There were 593,000 handicapped people in the labour force
(employed and unemployed). Of these 79 percent were employed. An
estimated 468,500 handicapped people were employed.

Approximately 124,500 disabled people were unemployed. Based on a
population of 19 million this is 0.65 percent of the population.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/b06660592430724fca2568b5007b8619/c258c88a7aa5a87eca2568a9001393e8!OpenDocument

Australia’s population was 19 million in 1998.
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/6250C12F5E6334CBCA2568A900136348

Another source says that in Australia approximately 3.7 million people
are disabled. This is approximately 18 percent of the Australian
population.
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:Hv0bwbfeT5wC:www.webreview.com/2001/03_16/webauthors/index04.shtml+australia+%22number+of+disabled%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Australia has approximately one million disabled people of working age
and only 50 percent of these are employed. Based on these figures 2.6
percent of the population could be employed.
http://www.leonard-cheshire.org/compass/12/c12-p14-p15.html>


<Search strategy:>
<australia "number of disabled">
<://www.google.com/search?q=australia+%22number+of+disabled%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=30&sa=N>

<"million disabled "  Australia>
<://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22million+disabled+%22++australia>

<australia statistics>
<://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=+australia+statistics>


<Hope this helps.>

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Request for Answer Clarification by ktea-ga on 30 Mar 2003 00:03 PST

I was hoping that there would be more information than on employable
people with disability - rather than just relying on the labour force
figures.

If there are one million people with disability of working age and
593K of these are in the labout force, is it reasonable to conclude
that only 593K are capable of being gainfully employed and that 407K
are not capable of being gainfully unemployed? Is there any way that
we can find out more about the 407K's capabilities/potential to be
employed?

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Clarification of Answer by belindalevez-ga on 30 Mar 2003 02:37 PST

<One of the factors about the other 407K that affects employment is
their level of disability. 3% of the population are profoundly
affected in their core activities of self care, mobility and
communication and 3% are severely affected. There are 1 million
disabled people of working age. Assuming that 6 percent of these were
either profoundly or severely affected in their level of activity this
would take 60,000 out of the disabled employment market. In addition
327,900 people with a core activity restriction were restricted in
schooling or in employment. These two factors together would account
for why 387,900 people could not work. The figure that I have used of
6% may well be higher in the working population since a large number
of disabilities are caused by work place accidents and diseases (see
the details of the European study given below).
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/b06660592430724fca2568b5007b8619/c258c88a7aa5a87eca2568a9001393e8!OpenDocument

A study by the European Union into employment of people with
disabilities found that the employment rate of disabled people was
lower than for non-handicapped people. Also where employment rates for
non-handicapped people were high, they were also high for disabled
people. The conclusion was that a good labour market is necessary to
reduce unemployment in the disabled.

A second factor was the level of skills of disabled people.
Educational attainment was found to be lower than the labour force as
a whole. Therefore raising the skills of disabled people would help
reduce their levels of unemployment.

Disability is mostly acquired through work in the form of occupational
accidents and diseases. A policy of preventing this through greater
enforcement of health and safety legislation would help to reduce this
problem. Details of work related injuries for Australia can be found
at http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs%40.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/88fc2a9391c1dd61ca256bcd008272f4!OpenDocument

Finally how people are classified affects the figures. It was found in
Europe that more people were being classified as disabled rather than
just unemployed.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/soc-prot/disable/highlevelgroup/disable_en.pdf>


<Hope this helps.>

Appreciated the rapidity of response to the intial question and again
to the clarification. It was great to have links to the source of info
contributing to the answer. $25 well spent.