NDIS Self-Employment & Microenterprise Statistics 2026: The Numbers That Don't Get Counted

76% of NDIS participants say they want a job. Only 38% have a work goal in their plan. And if you're self-employed, the national statistics don't even count you as employed. The system isn't built for people who want to work for themselves.

The baseline

At 30 June 2026 there were 782,013 active NDIS participants, according to the NDIS Quarterly Report. The employment rate for participants aged 15 to 64 sits at 24%, against the NDIA's own corporate target of 26% - a target it has been missing for years.

The funnel

The NDIA's own Participant Employment Strategy lays out the drop-off at every stage:

• 76% of participants say they want a job
• 38% of working-age participants actually have a work goal in their plan
• 33% of participants with a work goal are in paid employment

Three quarters of participants want to work. Less than half of those have it written into their plan. And a third of those are actually working. Every step leaks - and the middle number, the one that depends entirely on what gets written down in a planning meeting, is the one that's most directly fixable.

Self-employment specifically

This is where the data gets thin. The NDIA's own baseline breakdown of employment type, from its employment outcomes data, put self-employed participants at 1% of working participants aged 15-24, and 5% of those aged 25 and over. That data is older and should be read as a rough baseline rather than a current figure, but it's the only published split of its kind.

More telling: the AIHW's headline employment measure explicitly excludes participants who answer "self-employed" from its calculation. Microenterprise participants aren't counted as employed in the national statistics at all. If there's a single stat that proves the system isn't built for this path, that's it.

Who can actually access this support

On the NDIA's own published plan management split, 69% of participants are plan-managed, 21% fully self-managed and 4% partly self-managed - only 6% are NDIA-managed. That means roughly 94% of participants can legally engage an unregistered provider directly. For microenterprise support, delivered by unregistered providers almost everywhere, that's not a niche market - it's most of the scheme.

Why the gap exists

The scheme was designed around employment, not self-employment - the architecture assumes a job: a workplace, an employer, a Disability Employment Service doing the matching. Self-employment was added to the guidelines later, with no referral pathway built around it and no agency whose KPI is raising it in a planning meeting. Disability Employment Service providers are generally funded on job placements, a measurable outcome they're paid for - a microbusiness isn't, so there's little incentive to steer a participant toward one. The result is a funded category with almost nobody actively delivering it.

This article is general information dated 27 October 2026, not financial or planning advice. Funding eligibility always depends on the individual participant's plan. Juste is operated by Leah Justyce Art Gallery ABN 73 658 665 321.