New figures from the UK's largest employment law firm for employees reveal how discrimination is quietly costing people their jobs, and which grounds are rising fastest.

When someone loses their job, the official reason on paper is rarely the whole story.

Behind a “restructure” or a “performance issue” there is often something the law is meant to protect against: a disability, a pregnancy, someone's race, age, gender or faith.

New data from Monaco Solicitors, sister law firm to Grapple Law and the UK's largest specialist employment law firm for individuals, lifts the lid on how often discrimination sits behind a lost job, and how the pattern is shifting.

Between January 2024 and the end of June 2026, 28,500 of Monaco's clients cited discrimination as a reason they lost, or were pushed out of, their job. Here is what those cases tell us.

Mental health is now the number one thread

The single clearest trend is mental health. In 2024, just under half of discrimination-linked job losses (49.8%) mentioned a mental health condition.

By 2025 that had risen to 58.6%, and in the first half of 2026 it stood at 61.3%. In other words, roughly 6 in 10 of these cases now involve someone's mental health.

That is a jump of around 23% in the share of cases in just two and a half years.

It points to two things happening at once: more people are willing to name a mental health condition (stigma is falling), and more workplaces are struggling to support, or are actively penalising, staff who do.

Under the Equality Act 2010, a mental health condition can be a disability, which means employers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments.

Our numbers suggest that duty is being missed, or ignored, on a large and growing scale.

The other grounds: what is rising, what is steady

Mental health is not the only story. Breaking the cases down by protected characteristic reveals a wider picture:

A note on the figures: the 2024 and 2025 percentages cover full years, while the 2026 percentages cover the first half of the year only (January to June 2026). Because these are shares of cases rather than case totals, they remain directly comparable across all three years, and no full-year projection has been applied.

• Race remains the second most common ground, cited in around 1 in 5 cases every year (21.9% in 2024, 20.7% in the first half of 2026). Stubbornly high, and barely moving.
• Gender discrimination features in around 15% of cases, up from 13.8% in 2024.
• Age holds steady at roughly 1 in 9 cases (about 11 to 12%).
• Maternity and pregnancy is small in absolute terms but rising fastest in proportion, up around 25%, from 6.8% of cases in 2024 to 8.6% in the first half of 2026. For a ground that should, by now, be shrinking, that is a worrying direction of travel.
• Religion or belief stays consistent at around 3.5% of cases.

Reading between the lines

Data like this rewards a closer look. A few inferences worth drawing (all 2026 figures cover January to June only):

1. The volume itself is striking. Nearly 29,000 people in two and a half years felt discrimination played a part in losing their job, and those are only the people who reached out to one firm. The true national figure will be many times higher.

2. Mental health and job loss are locked together. As economic pressure rises, mental health worsens, and workers whose performance dips because of it are too often managed out rather than supported. Discrimination law is meant to break that cycle. The numbers suggest it frequently is not.

3. Progress on some fronts has stalled. Comparing 2024 with the first half of 2026, race discrimination is not falling and maternity and pregnancy discrimination is rising. Decades of legislation and awareness campaigns have not moved these numbers in the right direction.

4. Most of it stays hidden. For every case that reaches a lawyer, many more never do, because people do not know their rights, cannot afford traditional legal advice, or assume nothing can be done. That gap, between the discrimination that happens and the discrimination that gets challenged, is exactly the gap that Grapple Law was built to close.

Why this matters now

Discrimination at work is not an abstract legal concept.

It is someone losing the income that pays their rent, often at the very moment, an illness, a pregnancy, a bereavement, when they can least afford to fight back.

The people in this data are not statistics. They are new mothers, disabled workers, older employees and people of colour who did nothing wrong except be who they are.

The encouraging part: more of them are speaking up. Rising numbers are not only a sign of more discrimination, they are also a sign that more people are recognising it and refusing to accept it quietly.

That is where help comes in.

About Grapple Law

Grapple Law is an AI-powered legal service on a simple mission: justice for everyone.

It exists because cost and complexity have long kept ordinary people from enforcing rights they already have.

Grapple Law lets anyone find out, for free, whether they may have a case, and then helps them draft the letters, raise the issues and negotiate, all in plain English, on demand, without the intimidating price tag of traditional law.

Where a case has real value, Grapple's no win, no fee negotiation service steps in to fight for a settlement.

Built by the team behind Monaco Solicitors, the UK's largest employment law firm for individuals, Grapple Law is designed for anyone facing unfair treatment at work, from discrimination and unfair dismissal to redundancy and harassment, as well as everyday disputes with insurers.

Its aim is to make sure that the next time someone is pushed out of a job for the wrong reasons, the law is on their side, and within reach.

Since launch in September 2025 Grapple Law has around 6,000 monthly active users. Roughly £1.5M in settlements has been negotiated for our Grapple Law clients, and 700 plus Google and Trustpilot reviews are almost all five stars.

Find out for free whether you may have a case at grapple.law.

Grapple Law is a trading name of Grapple Tech Ltd. Monaco Solicitors is the UK's largest employment law firm acting for individuals only. Both Grapple Law and Monaco Solicitors were founded by employment lawyer Alex Monaco.

Figures are drawn from Monaco Solicitors' caseload; the 2026 figure covers the first half of the year (January to June 2026) and is therefore a part-year number.

Related reading

If you think discrimination played a part in losing your job, these Grapple Law guides explain your rights and next steps:

• Workplace discrimination claims: the overview of what counts and what you can do.
• How to prove discrimination at work: the evidence and legal steps that build a case.
• Direct and indirect discrimination: the key differences, explained simply.
• Compensation for discrimination at work: what you may be owed and how it is worked out.

Guides by ground: disability, race, sex and gender, age, pregnancy and maternity and religion or belief.

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