Labour market trajectories of disabled people – generating insights for more effective interventions - NZIER Insight 124

This Insight, the first of two produced in partnership with Workbridge, explores how the labour market pathways of disabled people can be better described and understood. Drawing on international research, we examine different approaches to identifying common patterns in employment experiences over time. Understanding these trajectories is an important first step toward designing interventions that can improve the long-term employment outcomes of disabled New Zealanders. Disabled people’s labour market participation represents a significant and often under-recognised economic opportunity.

While trajectory studies are well established for general and non-disabled populations and have generated valuable insights into labour market challenges and policy responses, relatively few comparable studies focus on disabled people. Moreover, recent New Zealand trajectory studies on disabled people are lacking. Overseas studies are shaped by institutional settings and locally available data, limiting the extent to which their findings translate to the New Zealand context, but these studies demonstrate a wide range of study designs and the potential for significant insights. The Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) offers a unique opportunity to undertake this type of study to deepen understanding of underlying drivers and inform the development of more effective, evidence-based interventions.