When Employment Is Not Enough: The Geography of Disability Underemployment in Britain
Using restricted-access UK microdata from 2025, this study employs a two-stage decomposition to reveal that while the national disability underemployment gap is 2.8 percentage points, there is significant geographic variation across 175 local areas, with the spatial distribution of short-hours employment being a primary driver of this local disparity.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Most people think of getting a job as the final step in the struggle for economic security. If a person with a disability is working, the assumption is often that they have crossed the finish line of inclusion. But for many, the finish line is just the starting gate. A worker can be officially employed, clocking in every day, yet still be unable to find the number of hours they need to support themselves. This gap between having a job and having enough work is known as underemployment. While policymakers have long tracked who gets hired, they have paid less attention to what happens after the hiring decision is made. The question is no longer just about who gets a foot in the door, but whether that door leads to a room with enough space to breathe.
This reality is particularly sharp in Britain, where recent statistics show that while the gap in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled people is large, a smaller but significant gap exists among those who are already working. In the spring of 2025, about ten percent of disabled workers reported wanting more hours than they were getting, compared to roughly eight percent of non-disabled workers. On the surface, this two-point difference might seem small. However, a new study by Haoran Wang at Yale University suggests that this national average hides a much more complex and uneven story. The research asks a simple but profound question: does the struggle to find enough work happen equally everywhere, or does it cluster in specific places?
To answer this, the researchers turned to a massive collection of data from the Annual Population Survey, which tracks the lives of nearly two million working people across Great Britain. They focused on 175 distinct local labor markets, ranging from bustling city centers to quiet rural towns. Instead of just counting how many people were underemployed in each area, the team looked specifically at the difference between disabled and non-disabled workers within those same neighborhoods. They wanted to see if the penalty for having a disability was the same in a wealthy suburb as it was in a struggling industrial town.
The study reveals that the situation is far from uniform. The gap in underemployment between disabled and non-disabled workers varies wildly from place to place. In some areas, the difference is negligible, while in others, it is substantial. The researchers found that estimated local gaps range from -5.6 to 11.4 percentage points. In the most affected locations, disabled workers were significantly more likely to be underemployed than their non-disabled counterparts, while in a few specific areas, the gap was so small or even reversed that disabled workers were slightly less likely to be underemployed, though these were the exceptions. This variation means that a national policy designed to help disabled workers might work perfectly in one town but fail completely in another, simply because the local conditions are different.
The researchers then broke down these local differences to understand their source. They asked whether the problem was caused by the people living in those areas or by the places themselves. The "people" factor refers to the mix of individuals in a community—their ages, education levels, family situations, and other personal characteristics. The "place" factor refers to the local economy: what kinds of jobs are available, how industries are structured, and how employers organize working hours. The analysis showed that both factors matter almost equally. In some locations, the gap exists because the local workforce has a specific mix of characteristics that make finding full-time work harder. In other locations, the gap persists even after accounting for who lives there, pointing to the local economy itself as the driver.
One of the most striking findings concerns the structure of work in these local markets. The study identified that the share of jobs offering short hours is a major component of the "place" effect. In areas where employers rely heavily on part-time or short-hour contracts, the gap for disabled workers tends to be wider. This suggests that the way work is organized in a specific region can disadvantage disabled workers more than others, regardless of their personal qualifications. It is not just that disabled people are less likely to be hired; it is that in certain local economies, the jobs that are available are less likely to provide the hours needed for a stable life.
The researchers were careful to note that their work is a diagnostic tool rather than a final verdict on cause and effect. They did not prove that moving to a different town would automatically fix the problem, nor did they claim to have isolated a single cause. Instead, they provided a detailed map of where the problem is most severe and what local features are associated with it. The study confirms that the geography of disability is not just about who gets a job, but about the quality and quantity of work available once that job is secured. By showing that the struggle for adequate hours is concentrated in specific places and linked to local economic structures, the research offers a clearer picture of where interventions are needed. It suggests that solving the issue of underemployment requires looking beyond national averages and understanding the unique economic landscape of each local community.
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