Why Do Employers (Fail to) Hire People with Disabilities? A Systematic Review of Capabilities, Opportunities and Motivations.
Rosanna Nagtegaal, Noortje de Boer, Rik van Berkel and 2 others
PMID 36689057WHAT IT FOUND
Employers most often fail to hire people with disabilities because they believe these candidates are unproductive or costly, or because they lack knowledge about accommodations.
Facilitators include pro-social motivation and organizational resources. Hiring decisions are complex, with factors like cost concerns having varying effects depending on the employer.
Key findings
01The most frequently cited barriers to hiring were beliefs that people with disabilities are not productive (14% of mentions) and expectations about costs (11% of mentions).
02Pro-social motivation (5%), working in a large organization (4%), and expecting a competitive advantage (4%) were the most cited facilitators.
03Most studies measured hiring subjectively, with employers reporting their perceptions rather than data on actual hires.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Most included studies used subjective measures of hiring (e.g., employer perceptions) rather than objective data (e.g., actual hire counts), which limits the certainty about what truly drives behavior. The review did not include a meta-analysis due to heterogeneity, so effect sizes are not reported. Many studies did not differentiate between types of disabilities, so findings may not apply equally to physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities. The search relied on a machine-learning screening tool (ASReview), which introduces a small risk of missing relevant studies, although the authors provided open data for transparency.
Declared interests
The study was funded by Instituut Gak. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these factors apply universally to all employers or all disability types. The review found that factors like cost concerns had mixed effects (negative in 57%, neutral in 43%) and most studies did not distinguish between different disabilities, so individual employer and client contexts vary significantly.