How many UK employees are neurodivergent?

Around 1 in 7 UK people (roughly 15%) are neurodivergent, so about 1 in 7 of your employees are too. That is a 2025 estimate, not an official count, and most are undiagnosed or undisclosed at work. The 15% figure comes from the City & Guilds Neurodiversity Index 2025, quoted by the House of Commons Library. Applied to a team of 100, that is roughly 14 to 15 people. On any realistic reading, this is not a fringe issue affecting a handful of staff.

What “neurodivergent” covers

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term. Acas lists the well-known types as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and Tourette’s, and notes the field is still being researched and understood. The 1-in-7 estimate counts all of these together, and it counts both people with a formal diagnosis and people who self-identify. That breadth matters: if you only count colleagues who have handed you a diagnosis letter, you are counting a small slice of the real number.

Why there is no official figure

There is no government headcount. In a 2026 freedom-of-information response, the Office for National Statistics confirmed it does not produce a single official figure for how many UK adults are neurodivergent, and that it cannot measure conditions such as dyslexia or dyspraxia. So every workforce-wide number you will see, including the 1-in-7 estimate, is an estimate rather than a count. Treat it as a planning assumption, not a precise queue.

The on-paper figure under-counts your workforce

For an employer, the operative point is that your declared numbers will be lower than reality. Most neurodivergent staff are undiagnosed or have simply not told you. In an Acas survey of line managers, 72% said employees not disclosing the need for an adjustment was a barrier to making one. So if you size the issue from your HR records, from declared diagnoses or from who has asked for an adjustment, you will badly under-estimate how many of your people are affected.

The employment gap is the other half of the picture. House of Commons Library figures for 2024/25 show how far behind some neurodivergent groups sit:

• 34.0% of disabled people with autism were in work.
• 55.3% of all disabled people were in work.
• 82.0% of non-disabled people were in work.

That gap means many neurodivergent people are missing from the workforce altogether, which makes the in-work population harder to count and the retention of the staff you do have more valuable. The business case for acting is not built on the people who have disclosed. It is built on the much larger group you cannot currently see.

This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.