11/05/2026
Op-Ed: Disability and Employment Struggles
By Dr Pamela J. MacNeill
The phrase “everyone is having a hard time getting work” is often presented as reassurance. It is meant to soften the blow for disabled job seekers by suggesting their struggle is not personal. But from a disability advocacy perspective, that statement can also erase the very real, lifelong structural discrimination disabled people experience long before a recession, labour market downturn, or youth employment crisis arrives.
There is a profound difference between entering a difficult job market for the first time and spending an entire lifetime fighting simply to be allowed through the door.
For many disabled New Zealanders, the employment struggle does not begin at graduation. It begins in childhood. It begins in classrooms where support is inconsistent, where expectations are lowered, where students are underestimated or segregated. It continues into tertiary education, where disabled students often have to advocate constantly for accessible materials, assessments, transport, technology, or basic inclusion. Many become experts in resilience long before we ever submit a CV.
By the time a disabled person reaches the workforce, we are often already exhausted from years of proving we belong.
So if society even bothers to respond to our unemployment with “well, everyone is struggling,” it ignores the unequal starting points. It frames systemic discrimination as merely unfortunate timing.
That is not equality.
A nondisabled graduate facing a difficult labour market is encountering a barrier. A disabled graduate may be encountering layered barriers: inaccessible recruitment systems, employer prejudice, assumptions about productivity, transport limitations, benefit system disincentives, inadequate workplace accommodations, and the emotional toll of repeated rejection rooted not in capability but discomfort and bias.
The issue is not simply unemployment. It is unequal access to opportunity.
One of the cruellest realities disabled professionals face is the contradiction between qualifications and employability. Many disabled people are told throughout our education that success depends on gaining qualifications, working hard, and persevering. Yet after meeting every expectation placed upon us, we still encounter suspicion from employers. Gaps in employment become interpreted not as evidence of systemic exclusion, but as personal failure.
And those gaps matter disproportionately.
A nondisabled person with interruptions in employment may be viewed as someone who had bad luck, changed careers, travelled, or experienced economic hardship. A disabled person with identical gaps is often viewed through a deficit lens: unreliable, risky, fragile, expensive, or “too hard.” Employers may never say this openly, but disabled applicants experience its consequences repeatedly.
This creates a cycle of psychological harm. People begin internalising the message that no matter how qualified we become, we will still be seen as less employable than “normal people.” The repeated need to justify one’s existence in professional spaces becomes a form of social attrition.
And yet many disabled people have demonstrated extraordinary capability when actually given opportunities.
The irony is that disabled workers often develop skills employers claim to value: adaptability, problem-solving, persistence, creativity, empathy, and resilience under pressure. Many have navigated inaccessible systems their entire lives. We know how to innovate because survival has required it.
When disabled people do obtain good jobs, we frequently excel. But too often, employment continuity depends less on competence and more on whether a particular manager or organisation is genuinely inclusive. One visionary employer can transform someone’s career trajectory. A prejudiced employer can derail it overnight.
This inconsistency exposes an uncomfortable truth: the problem is not disabled people’s capacity to work. The problem is society’s inconsistent willingness to include us.
That is why it is deeply problematic to suggest disabled professionals should quietly step aside because the broader population is also struggling. Economic hardship does not cancel out discrimination. If anything, downturns often intensify it. When competition increases, marginalised groups are usually pushed further to the edges first.
History shows this repeatedly. Disabled workers are often among the last hired and first discarded.
Advocacy in this space therefore cannot merely focus on “helping disabled people become work ready.” Many already are work ready. Some are overqualified. The conversation must shift toward employer accountability, systemic accessibility, and confronting ableism in hiring practices.
This includes difficult but necessary questions:
• Why are disabled applicants still filtered out before interviews?
• Why are disclosure decisions still fraught with risk?
• Why are workplace accommodations often treated as burdens rather than ordinary aspects of inclusion?
• Why are employment gaps interpreted differently depending on whether someone is disabled?
• Why is disabled unemployment persistently higher even among well educated populations?
These are not individual failings. They are indicators of systemic inequity.
There is also a moral dimension to this discussion. A society that tells disabled people to study, work hard, and contribute, while simultaneously denying them equitable access to employment, creates a profound breach of trust. It asks disabled people to endlessly invest in systems that do not invest equally in them.
That betrayal accumulates over time.
It affects mental health, confidence, financial stability, housing security, relationships, and social participation. Unemployment for disabled people is not merely an economic issue. It is tied to dignity, belonging, and recognition of human worth.
And importantly, disabled people are not asking for charity. We are asking for fairness.
Fairness means recognising that “equal treatment” in an unequal system simply preserves inequality. It means understanding that diversity hiring is not about lowering standards, but correcting exclusionary assumptions about who competence looks like. It means valuing lived experience as part of professional expertise rather than viewing disability solely through a medical or deficit model.
Most of all, fairness means rejecting the idea that disabled people should patiently wait their turn until conditions improve for everyone else.
Because for many disabled New Zealanders, the waiting has already lasted a lifetime.
