<p>I was playing around with these 2009 Census stats ([Disability</a> Statistics: Resource for U.S. Disability Statistics](<a href=“http://www.disabilitystatistics.org/]Disability”>http://www.disabilitystatistics.org/)) today , and it struck me that disability, far more than race/ethnicity or gender seemed to predict lack of employment in the working age (21-64) population. For example, about 22.5% of those 21-64 with disabilities reported working full year, full-time compared to 57% of those 21-64 without disabilities (actually, that stat seemed alarming low, too–maybe due to the inclusion of 21-22 y/o college students?). Even when you control for education (BA or higher), and look at employment in general (full time or otherwise), you still have only 55% of people with disabilities working at all versus about 84% of those ages 21-64 without a disability. Better, but still quite low. Moreover, still controlling for educational attainment disability, is far more predictive than race, ethnicity, or gender. (FWIW, among disability groups and still controlling for educational attainment, people with hearing disabilities fared far better than most other groups at around 70% employment, although still noticeably below the non-disabled sample).</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t get it. You have people of working age with college degrees (and in some cases, graduate and professional degrees)–and therefore presumably some aptitude–and yet just over half are working at all! I can’t help but feel that if this was any other group, there would be a lot more social concern. It sometimes seems as though people are still in the mindset of “people with disabilities can’t work,”
regardless of qualifications and interest, and I find that both angering and depressing. It’s often been noted that employment is one area where the ADA has failed to make any noticeable impact…</p>
<p>Well, as someone with a disability that prevents me from working at any number of jobs but isn’t mobility limiting or anything like that–hearing loss in my case-I can’t use a telephone or hear well in groups or when there is background noise and a whole host of situations, if you can find me a job where I don’t have to hear to work that I am qualified to do, please let me know. </p>
<p>I know other people with major back issues that can’t sit for more than 15 minutes, nor can they stand for more than 15 minutes so they are constantly up and down, up and down…what kind of job do you suggest for them?</p>
<p>How about the surgeon who lost 3 fingers in an auto accident…</p>
<p>The ADA has made it easier. I used to be able to use the phone and the company had to supply me with an amplifier so I could hear on the phone. That made it so I could work for about 10 more years than I could without it. My hearing loss has gotten to the point where that no longer helps. What else can the ADA do? My problem is, my hearing isn’t “technically” enough to qualify for SSDI and my private plans all have exclusions for hearing loss because this was a 'pre-existing condition" (which happened when I was 30, not something I was born with).</p>
<p>I’m curious- what do they define as disability? (For whatever reason, I’m having a really hard time navigating the site). </p>
<p>It depends on the disability. My father is permanently disabled, but before his accident he owned his own business and worked 60 hour weeks. He now works a few odds and ends jobs (photography assistant, crossing guard, usher) because he can’t hold down any kind of permanent jobs. His mental and physical disabilities don’t allow that. </p>
<p>Btw, fwiw- he absolutely hates it. He wants nothing more than to work full time but his body simply won’t allow him. It’s been a major source of conflict for both him internally and between him and other people (due to some anger issues that have developed because of his frustration) ever since the accident. </p>
<p>OTOH, over half of the people I work with have physical/mental disabilities. I guess it makes sense since I work for an organization that’s part of the Michigan Commission for the Blind haha.</p>
<p>“It’s often been noted that employment is one area where the ADA has failed to make any noticeable impact…”</p>
<p>I’m curious as to where you get that information.</p>
<p>I think the ramps, elevators, automatic doors, large BR stalls, etc. are accommodations mandated by law.</p>
<p>Many jobs specify in the job description (even white collar jobs) that you need to be able to lift a certain weight, which probably disqualifies many disabled.</p>
<p>Desk jobs can easily accommodate a need to change between sitting and standing frequently – raise the desk so that work can be done standing, provide a chair that allows working seated at that desk. I have seen this done, though it could have just been done as an ergonomic preference without any formal designation of a disability (no idea if the people involved had back issues or other disabilities).</p>
<p>Of course, if the person’s best job would be something involving physical work, or something where switching between standing and seated frequently is not an option (e.g. bus driver), that type of disability would be harder to work around.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wouldn’t that depend on which three fingers and what kind of surgery?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have seen this for job listings of computer system administrators. Before flat panel monitors, big monitors could weigh 70 pounds or so. But even now, a server computer filled with disk drives can be quite heavy.</p>
<p>My massage therapist got both her undergrad and grad degrees in exercise physiology. She now practices exclusively as a massage therapist, and I can confidently say (after having tried many, many people), she is the best there is!</p>
<p>I think that knowing why you did or not get a job is so ambiguous – and the market so competitive – that I’d imagine it’s hard to enforce the ADA regarding hiring decisions.</p>
<p>There could also be cases where a disability is not disclosed (and therefore not the reason for not being hired but there could be a way that the person comes across that the employer notices as different or a resume gap or something, and employers get so many good applicants that they are basically looking for reasons to eliminate people.</p>
<p>57% working without disabilities doesn’t sound too far off… Think how many people take early retirement… i work in insurance… it’s a lot… Also, think how many moms or dads stay home to raise kids in that age group. Students would have something to do with it but typically only on the younger end of that age bracket.</p>
<p>Essentially every person who cannot work under any circumstances, and thus is always part of the unemployed category, is disabled. There are very few other reasons for somebody to never work, ie, independently wealthy from birth. These other cases are vanishingly rare. </p>
<p>The employment statistics for the disabled category will always include this subgroup, therefore there is a hard limit to how high the employment numbers of disabled people can be. Even if every single person who is disabled but can work to some degree is employed (which would imply that disabled people are actually far better off than the non-disabled, which of course isn’t actually the case), the overall numbers will still look bad. </p>
<p>The real solution is to better interpret such statistical information.</p>
I don’t know what you’re qualified to do but you’d be able to do software development without hearing. It wouldn’t stop me from employing a person for that job who couldn’t hear as long as I can somehow communicate with them reasonably. As it is, a lot of the communication nowadays is via email anyway.</p>
<p>I know there’re are a certain number of people who claim disability and then don’t work even though they’d likely be able to if they were willing to work at a job that could accommodate their disability. And now with things like ‘anxiety disorder’ counting as a disability it’s hard to say whether they have a real issue or simply don’t want to work.</p>
<p>I remember hearing a story from my O&M instructor about one of her students who graduated with a degree in egineering, but could not find a job for years because of her obvious visual disability (cane) until some employer was willing to give her a shot and she turned out to be a great asset for that company. My point is that she should of gotten a job offer a long time ago instead of having to wait years so the ADA needs to take better action so this won’t happen to anyone again or me.</p>
<p>I think there is the assumption that many disabilities can be accommodated. Not so. My mother was a disability examiner for the state of Texas back in the 80s. While the largest percentage of disabilities are due to mobility, disabilities come in all forms - mental disabilities ( for example, schizophrenia or mental retardation). Diseases like Parkinson’s, COPD, severe heart disease (even in young adults). Communication, memory and learning disabilities secondary to things Like MS and stroke. Chronic pain is another big category. Just to name a few…</p>
<p>Depending upon the state, it is usually a very arduous task to get on disability - requiring numerous medical exams, doctors testimony, etc. My mom hated her job because it was so difficult to get people on disability when they truly needed it.</p>
<p>I work for a government contractor, and quite a few of my colleagues have disabilities.</p>
<p>But it’s easy to see how their disabilities limit their job choices. In my own department, there is a man who is hard of hearing and a man who has low vision. They each do their jobs well, but even if they had identical skills and education, neither could do the other one’s job. Their disabilities would prevent it. </p>
<p>The man who has low vision could not cope with the extensive reading and writing that are part of the other man’s job (he has magnifying equipment for his computer, but it takes him much more time than it takes other people to read through a document because of the awkwardness of working with this equipment). And the man who is hard of hearing could not run group training sessions, an essential part of the other man’s job, because he cannot follow conversations in a room full of people. </p>
<p>I think it’s also important to remember that not all disabilities start at birth. They can develop at any time in a person’s life and catch the person by surprise. And their impact on a person’s ability to work depends on the type of work that person is trained to do. I once knew a man who was struggling to find work because an injury that left him with a seemingly minor impairment in the use of one arm prevented him from doing the only type of work he had ever done – working as a server in a restaurant. You can’t wait tables if you can’t carry trays, and he could no longer do that.</p>
<p>There’s also a member of my extended family who has an illness that has led to increasing degrees of fatigue. For several years after the illness developed, she was able to continue working because her company allowed her to work from home. But now even that is not possible. She cannot be active for enough hours each day to hold down any type of job. She has a master’s degree, but that is no help. She’s one of your statistics – a person age 21-64 with at least a bachelor’s degree who is disabled and not working.</p>
<p>There are many different situations, and not all of them can be accommodated.</p>
<p>Mom live, it is much less difficult to get on disability today. Their are law firms that specialize in exactly that and it is big business for them. In fact there are so many on disability that the government is worried about the funding. The Wall Street Journal just did a big piece on this.</p>
<p>GladGradDad–no, I would not be able to do that, I add on my fingers :). I do have a part-time job that, for the most part, works for me, however, it’s part time and I can’t do anything to change that due to the nature of the job. I hesitate to say this too, but I don’t want to do some job just to have a job either. I could never sit at a computer all day doing data entry, for example. Yes, I could do that without hearing, but mentally I could not deal with the monotony of the job.</p>
<p>Another factor to consider is that a significant number of disabled individuals receive public assistance, including Medicaid. There are strict limits on how much money they can make and retain Medicaid. Under our currently dysfunctional medical coverage delivery system, a person without a good, full time job is likely to not be offered coverage through an employer, and will be unable to afford coverage in the open market. So a disabled person who needs medical coverage–ie, doesn’t get it through a spouse–will likely be unable to work without losing their medical coverage. </p>
<p>Years ago, I worked on a survey of disabled individuals in our state that addressed this very issue. Many of the people I spoke to said that they would like to have a part time job–they were mostly not able to work full time–IF they could retain medical coverage.</p>
<p>BTW, I now work on both surveys cited in the posted article: ACS and CPS. So please be nice to the Census Bureau person who contacts you if your address is selected for the sample and do the survey. :)</p>
<p>Yes, but they certainly don’t take care of all situations. They are irrelevant to people whose disabilities involve vision or hearing problems or mental or emotional limitations. And they only go so far to accommodate people with mobility limitations. </p>
<p>At my company, for example, we work on a campus with multiple buildings stretching over almost a mile. We have all of the required accommodations within our buildings, but they are of no help to an employee with a mobility limitation who is scheduled into two meetings fifteen minutes apart at opposite ends of the campus. (I’m thinking of myself here, actually. As a result of a minor problem with one leg, I walk slower than most people do. The tight scheduling of meetings in buildings far apart from each other is a real issue for me – and I probably don’t even qualify as officially disabled.)</p>