Mental health related disabilities on the rise in Canada’s workforce

New data is showing that the prevalence of mental health-related disabilities in Canada’s workforce has increased over the past few years, especially among female workers.

Combined data from the Labour Force Survey and the Canadian Income Survey found that in the first four months of 2021, 21.5 per cent of employed Canadians had a physical, mental health, cognitive or other disability. This marks an increase of 2.7 per cent since 2019’s figure of 18.8 per cent.

The figures show that the proportion of employed Canadians with a mental health disability was reported at 8.7 per cent in 2021, up 2.3 points from the 6.4 per cent in 2019. Statistics Canada notes that this increase was recorded under the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the increase was likely due to an increase in mental health related disabilities in the existing workforce rather than an increase in employing people with a disability.

Women aged 16 to 24 had the largest increase of all major demographic groups, climbing 7.6 per cent over two years to 17.2 per cent in 2021. The data shows 8.9 per cent of men in that same age group had a mental health-related disability in 2021, down 0.7 per cent from two years before.

Data shows that 13 per cent of women in the core working working ages of 25 to 54 had a mental health disability, compared to 6.5 per cent of men in that demographic. Those figures mark a 4.7 per cent increase in women over the past two years and a 1.6 per cent increase in men.

The prevalence of mental health related disability in the 55 and older demographics remained fairly flat over the past two years, with figures being reported at 4.5 per cent for women and 3.3 per cent for men.

The Canadian Survey on Disability from 2017 found the most common disability type among Canadians aged 15 to 24 was mental health-related.