Integrating Severely Disabled Individuals into the Labour Market: The Austrian Case

Brigitte Humer (), Jean-Philippe Wuellrich () and Josef Zweimüller
Additional contact information
Brigitte Humer: affiliation not available
Jean-Philippe Wuellrich: University of Zurich

No 2649, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the impact of the Austrian Employment Act for the Disabled which grants extended employment protection, requires a hiring quota for firms, and subsidizes the employment of severely disabled (SD) workers. Using a large sample of eligible individuals we compare workers before and after acquiring legal SD-status. Unsurprisingly, we find that holding SD-status is associated with lower employment and earnings. However, workers holding a job when acquiring legal SD-status have substantially better subsequent employment prospects after SD-award than before. In contrast, workers who do not hold a job at the date of SD-entry do dramatically worse after SD-award than before. This suggests that employment protection legislation places substantial firing costs on firms and has a major impact on the decisions of firms to hire disabled workers.

Keywords: disability; employment protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J71 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2007-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp2649.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2649

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().