According to the two-year study, the decline in the number of jobs for people who need to work remotely, including those with disabilities, is undermining the government’s efforts to reverse rising unemployment.
A survey of working-age disabled people by researchers at Lancaster University found that more than eight in 10 respondents said doing housework was essential or very important when looking for a new job.
Almost half (46%) of people in the Inclusive Remote and Hybrid Working Study wanted to work remotely, with disabled women and disabled carers the most likely to want to work entirely from home.
The study found that the needs of job applicants with disabilities are running counter to employers’ tendency to reduce hybrid and remote working.
An analysis of Adzuna’s job vacancies data showed declining levels of remote job opportunities. In the 2024-25 financial year, only one in 23 job adverts in Adzuna (4.3%) was fully remote – half of what was seen during the peak of the pandemic in 2020-21 at 8.7%.
“Growth in the availability of hybrid jobs appears to have stalled, with only one in seven (13.5%) job vacancies offering hybrid work in 2024-25,” the report said.
It followed official employment figures earlier this week which showed one in 11 disabled people were unemployed (9.2%), double the 4.4% average.
The Office for National Statistics found there were 547,000 unemployed disabled people in 2024, an increase of 110,000 from the same period.
“Unemployment has risen across the UK economy in the past 12 months, but the analysis suggests that the rate has risen more quickly for disabled people than for non-disabled people,” said the Lancaster University-based Work Foundation, a thinktank that co-ordinated the remote-working project with Manchester Metropolitan University.
Billed as the largest study of disabled workers’ experiences of remote and hybrid work in the UK with funding from the Nuffield Foundation, it includes interviews with more than 1,200 disabled people.
Although remote and hybrid work has become more common since the pandemic, the proportion of fully remote roles has fallen and the rate of growth in hybrid jobs has slowed, the report said.
64% of disabled workers who are fully remote say their work style has positively affected their physical health, compared to 31% of those who work remotely less than half the time.
A quarter of respondents wanted to work from home four days a week and 27% wanted to work from home three days or less, demanding hybrid work.
Only a small fraction – 1.6% – wanted to stop working from home.
One of the respondents, Vera, in her 20s and working for a healthcare company in London, said she was staying at home after stem cell treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS).
She could not return to the frontline role. “Remote work has made it possible for me to maintain employment – I couldn’t have worked without it,” she says.
“I’ve reduced my hours to four days a week, working from home means I can avoid cognitive fatigue and rest during lunch breaks so I can be productive.
“But I was stuck because there were so few remote roles. Those were the roles I could realistically apply for if I wanted to work and move my career forward.”
A recent study by the Work Foundation and the MS Society found that nearly half of people with MS (47%) are looking for job positions that require little or no travel.
Lead researcher Paula Holland said: “The availability of remote and hybrid work has improved the work experience of many people with disabilities since before the pandemic. Our findings suggest that disabled employees reap significant benefits, including better mental and physical health, better work-life balance and productivity.
“However, companies ordering people to return to the workplace have diminished remote-only opportunities, and this may prevent some disabled workers from returning and staying at work. While the government wants people to work, finding disabled workers in suitable home-work roles can be the difference between working or not working.”
A recent House of Lords report called on ministers to ensure remote and hybrid working to boost employment of disabled people.
