The employment of people with disabilities in Catalonia stands at 32.8%, well below the general 74.1%.
The gap is repeated in unemployment and activity, with a distance of 41.7 points with respect to the Catalan average.
The occupancy rate remains at 32.8% and the unemployment rate rises to 16.4%
Idescat data show a very wide gap between the population with disabilities and the Catalan labor market as a whole. The unemployment rate for this group reaches 16.4%, compared to 9% for the general average, and the activity rate remains at 39.3%, 41.7 points below 81%.
Ricard Matas, director of the inclusion area of Pere Claver Grup, links part of the difference to the lack of incentives and transition towards ordinary employment.
"There are many people who do not take action to find work" - Ricard Matas, director of the inclusion area of Pere Claver Grup
The same official maintains that there is no fluid bridge between protected work centers and ordinary companies, which limits the exit of workers and the creation of vacancies for other profiles.
In their diagnosis, people with physical disabilities find more barriers to adjust the position to their needs. In the case of intellectual disability, the leap to a normalized company is usually very small, while in mental health problems, job continuity becomes complicated by intermittency.
COCARMI denounces that reasonable adjustments do not arrive and that the law is not complied with
Inma Gómez, technical director of the Catalan Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities, places the problem in various phases of the process, from training to hiring.
"These difficulties affect all stages" - Inma Gómez, technical director of the Catalan Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities
Gómez adds that training continues to be a barrier and that this prevents making the leap to the professional world with the same guarantees as the rest. He also states that the reasonable adjustments to jobs, necessary and mandatory for a person with a disability to be able to carry out their work, are often not applied.
Spanish legislation obliges companies with more than 50 workers to reserve 2% of their staff for people with disabilities, but Gómez assures that this quota is not met in many cases. That is why he calls for more inspections and more awareness so that hiring does not respond solely to a legal obligation.
SMEs concentrate employment and ask for fewer administrative hurdles
Ricard Matas remembers that the majority of Catalan companies are small and are not subject to the legal obligation to reserve places. That leaves a very large part of the productive fabric outside the most demanding framework.
Maria Àngels Benítez, head of Social Policies and Labor Inclusion of Pimec, defends that there is business willingness to hire, but that intermediation with the rest of the social agents is lacking.
"Companies have the will to hire" - Maria Àngels Benítez, head of Social Policies and Labor Inclusion at Pimec
Benítez adds that the system is not designed for SMEs, which are the vast majority of Catalonia's productive fabric, and emphasizes administrative complexity as an added obstacle. He also calls for support for both the individual and the company, and for bureaucratic barriers to be eliminated.
Ricard Matas summarizes the problem as a lack of coordination between the agents involved, while Benítez calls for a system that takes SMEs into account and a paradigm shift towards active policies. Gómez, for his part, insists that education must be made more inclusive and stigmas must be eliminated.
Benítez claims specific support to develop and execute equality plans in SMEs.