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Kazakhstan is home to 725,000 people with disabilities. Among them, 33% have musculoskeletal impairments, 14.5% have visual impairments, 5% have hearing impairments, and 4.6% use wheelchairs. Of the 425,000 citizens with disabilities of working age, only 30% are employed and working. By comparison, the employment rate for people with disabilities reaches 53.6% in the United Kingdom, 56.1% in Australia, and 61.8% in Canada.

The human reality behind these figures is straightforward: a person with a disability who cannot find employment remains dependent on state benefits that are insufficient to cover the additional costs of medical care and assistive devices. The consequence is economic dependency, limited social participation, and deepening inequality that also weighs on public finances through greater demand on pension and welfare systems.

To address this problem through rigorous scientific inquiry, a researcher is implementing the project "State Regulation of Employment of Persons with Physical Disabilities: Barriers and Development Prospects in the Republic of Kazakhstan." It is an applied research study within the priority direction "Intellectual Potential of the Country," in the specialisation of socioeconomic inequality, employment, and unemployment.

Employment rates for people with disabilities vary dramatically across Kazakhstan's regions — from 22.8% to 42.6%. Only two regions, Karaganda and Ulytau oblasts, exceed the 40% mark. The Abai, Almaty, Zhambyl, Zhetysu, and Turkestan oblasts and the city of Shymkent show the weakest results, ranging from 22.8% to 29%.

The state currently employs two principal instruments to support employment: job quotas for persons with disabilities and subsidisation of employer costs when they create specialised workplaces. The empirical record of both instruments over the last three years is troubling.

Under the quota system, 72% of the set quota was filled in 2021, 56% in 2022, and 53% in 2023 — a consistent downward trajectory. As for employer subsidies: since the subsidy mechanism was introduced, the number of specialised workplaces created for persons with disabilities has fallen by 57%. The instruments are operational. The results are moving in the wrong direction.

Understanding why this is happening is the central scientific problem of the project.

In Kazakhstan, most domestic research on disability focuses on inclusive education. Employment of persons with disabilities is studied infrequently, and a comprehensive analysis of state regulation of employment specifically for persons with physical disabilities — aimed at identifying barriers, systematising them, and producing solutions — has not previously been conducted.

The project's distinctive scientific contribution lies in its specificity. Rather than treating disability as a single undifferentiated category, it concentrates on physical impairments specifically. This allows for the identification of barriers and opportunities that are particular to this group, rather than averaged across all disability types.

A central output is the development of a conceptual model of employment policy for persons with physical disabilities. The project leader has prior experience building such models: an earlier conceptual framework illustrated the causes of passive income among people with disabilities and charted trends from 1980 to 2021. The new model advances on this foundation by focusing on a specific disability type, incorporating the particular features of employment for this group, and integrating lessons from developed country approaches.

The project's goal is to research and analyse the state of government regulation of employment for persons with physical disabilities, identify the impeding factors and barriers, determine development prospects, and develop recommendations aimed at increasing employment levels and improving wellbeing for this population in Kazakhstan.

Four interconnected tasks define the research programme. The first is revealing the theoretical foundations of state regulation of employment for persons with physical disabilities through a literature review with bibliometric analysis, and developing a conceptual model. The second is studying international experience in developed countries — identifying policy approaches that have achieved positive employment outcomes and conducting comparative analysis. The third is analysing the situation in Kazakhstan using qualitative and quantitative research methods: expert interviews, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs with physical disabilities, and a large-scale survey. The fourth is developing concrete recommendations for the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, along with measures to improve state regulation of employment.

The project deploys four complementary methods.

Literature review with bibliometric analysis draws on scientific articles in Scopus and Web of Science, reports of the International Labour Organization, Kazakhstan's normative legal framework, and local government materials. Bibliometric analysis enables systematic coverage of the research landscape and identification of key intellectual threads.

Comparative analysis examines the policy instruments of developed countries — quotas, subsidies, anti-discrimination legislation — to identify approaches that have produced sustained results and may be adapted to Kazakhstan's context. The employment gap in Kazakhstan stands at 65.2 percentage points; in developed countries it ranges from 15 to 28 points. Understanding what drives this difference is central to the comparative work.

Expert interviews are conducted with managers of private and public organisations employing people with physical disabilities, the Director of the Employment Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, and directors of employment centres in Almaty and other cities. The focus is on identifying effective measures for ensuring employment.

Semi-structured interviews are conducted with entrepreneurs with physical disabilities to identify the specific barriers they encounter in their business activity — a dimension rarely captured in existing research.

Structural equation modelling is the core quantitative instrument. Primary data are collected through personal surveys of citizens with physical disabilities and citizens without disability. Processing is carried out in Stata software. The model measures complex interrelationships between environmental barriers and employment status, enabling a rigorous comparative analysis of how the same external factors affect the two groups differently.

The project is grounded in Kazakhstan's international commitments. In 2015, the country ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In 2023, the Optional Protocol was ratified, enabling citizens to file complaints with the UN Committee. The National Plan for Ensuring the Rights and Improving the Quality of Life of Persons with Disabilities runs through 2025.

The tenth Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations calls for reducing inequalities and promoting the active participation of all citizens in social, economic, and political life regardless of disability status. Kazakhstan's employment gap of 65.2 percentage points between people with and without disabilities — compared to 15–28 points in developed countries — represents one of the most concrete manifestations of this inequality.

At the scientific level, the project will produce the first systematic conceptual model of employment policy for persons with physical disabilities in Kazakhstan, capturing the specific features of this group and the regulatory instruments that affect them.

At the policy level, concrete recommendations will be submitted to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, grounded in identified barriers and the comparative evidence from developed countries. Specific measures for improving the state regulation of employment will be proposed.

At the socioeconomic level, raising the employment rate of people with disabilities is simultaneously a question of human rights, social equity, and economic rationality. An employed person with a disability reduces the burden on the pension system and public welfare expenditure, contributing to the broader fiscal sustainability of social policy.

All results will be published in journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Project participants plan to present findings at international scientific conferences dedicated to labour market inclusion and disability policy.