From Forbes:
“10 Things Everyone Should
Know About People With Disabilities And Employment”
What more is there to say, this
later in October, about National Disability Employment Awareness Month, or
NDEAM for short? It’s hard to come up with anything new to say about disability
and employment. Millions of disabled Americans are looking for a good job, but can’t
find one, no matter how good the economy might be. Lots of them have gone far
out of their way to earn career credentials. Many have ensured physical,
mental, and financial hardships along the way that most people would never put
up with themselves. Meanwhile, millions of other disabled people work hard
every day, in low-wage jobs and work programs. They and the work they do has
value, but they aren’t treated or paid that way. Most people know this, at
least vaguely, unless they are decades rather than years behind current
understanding of disability issues. It’s hard to
On the other hand, it’s
relatively easy to exhort employers for the thousandth time to “hire the
disabled,” extolling the supposed benefits of having disabled employees. So
that’s what a lot of NDEAM seems to amount to. It’s a true and necessary
message, but it feels insubstantial and inadequate. People with disabilities
who are looking for work may find things like NDEAM superficially encouraging,
but is it really much help? Does yet another annual round of corporate
resolutions and seminars really amount to much in the way of better access and
opportunity? It’s complicated, too. Claims about how hard working and reliable
disabled people are, though in a way usually true, often feel like they might
be counterproductive — encouraging inflated expectations and even exploitation.
Are we so desperate for “a chance” that we will literally do anything, for any
small reward? Still, it’s always helpful to share practical tips — ways that
employers can actually make work more accessible and genuinely worthwhile for
applicants and employees with disabilities.
Maybe the best thing to do each
October is go back to basics, and try to give the broadest possible audience as
much basic information as possible on disability and employment. Before another
disability employment month ends, it may help to review some of the things that
disability employment experts and people with disabilities know pretty well
already, but others, including some disabled people, might not be so clear
about.
1. Rates of unemployment for
people with disabilities are consistently very high — much higher than for
non-disabled people. Raw numbers alone don’t tell the full story. We have to
compare employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people, in two distinct
measures: Working-age employment to
population ratio — the percent of people 16-64 that are employed: in 2020 it
was 17.9% for people with disabilities, compared with 61.8% for non-disabled
people. Unemployment rate — the percent of the population who are unemployed
and actively looking for work: in 2020 it was 12.6% for people with
disabilities, compared to 7.9% for non-disabled people. True, the pandemic
raised unemployment rates for everyone. However, its impact on employment was
somewhat worse for disabled than for non-disabled people. And the overall
employment gap between disbaled and non-disabled people rarely changes by more
than a percentage point or two either way. Even accounting for disabled people
who aren’t looking for work because of their disabilities, paid work is just
much harder to find than it is for people who aren’t disabled.
2. Disability rights laws like
Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act are designed to protect disabled
people from workplace disability discrimination, and mandate accessibility and
individual accommodations. But these regulations are hard to enforce. In
most real life workplaces, the threat of an ADA discrimination lawsuit from a
disabled applicant turned down for a job, or a disabled employee denied and
accommodation just isn’t that signficant. The ADA provides a valuable template
for equal opportunity, but not as much protection as some might think.
3. The federal government and
some states have numerical hiring goals in an effort to open up employment
opportunities to people with disabilities in government. This provides a
potentially strong incentive, but only for a fairly narrow segment of the
workforce,
4. Every state has a program
specifically designed to help people with disabilities train for employment,
and get and keep jobs. Each state program has its own name, but they are
all generally termed “Vocational Rehabilitation.” It provides job counseling,
adaptation ideas, various job training and coaching programs, and some funding
for education. It’s a slate of services designed to help disabled people become
more competitive in the job market. It’s a professional field that got its
earliest start after the Civil War, and really got going after the First and
Second World Wars, initially serving wounded soldiers looking for ways to make
a living.
5. There are two different
Social Security programs for people with disabilities who are deemed “unable to
work” — Supplemental Security Income, (SSI), and Social Security Disability,
(SSDI). Their amounts and eligibility criteria are different and can be quite
complex. Roughly speaking, SSDI is for disabled people who have worked before,
and their monthly benefits are based on their previous wages. SSI is based on
income, and you don’t have to have worked to get it.
6. There are various
restrictions on how much a disabled person can earn and save while still
collecting SSDI, SSI, Medicaid and Medicare. While there are rules in place
that are supposed to make it possible to gradually transition from benefits to
work, most of these criteria and rules haven’t been significantly updated in
decades. As a result, while Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are
absolutely essential for many disabled people, their eligibility criteria also
tend to trap us in poverty, and make actually doing well in a job perversely
risky.
7. There is an over 80 year
old provision of federal employment law that allows some disabled people to be
paid less than minimum wage. It is intended to provide jobs for people who
are thought to be unable to get any job at standard wages. It’s also supposed
to be temporary, like an extended internship. But it tends to become permanent.
And it’s often used as a dumping ground that looks like success, and as a
source of cheap, easily exploited labor for some businesses. There is a growing
movement to end the practice, but also some anxious opposition. These two
recent segments of The Daily Show flesh out the issue pretty well:
8. One appealing way to avoid
the disability discrimination that persists in so many standard workplaces is
to set up special businesses specifically to provide employment to people with
disabilities. You hear about them every now and then in your local news.
Coffee shops and similar businesses that are promoted as employment
opportunities for people with disabilities make for uplifting news stories. But
while they can be genuinely positive workplaces, it’s important to ask critical
questions about how the workers are paid, how they are treated on the job, and
whether they are employed throughout the business or just in certain low-status
roles.
9. There are several
organizations that study disability and employment in depth, in an effort to
better understand barriers to employment and hopefully suggest new solutions
that might actually make a significant impact on that huge employment gap. These
include Mathematica and the Kessler Foundation’s National Trends In Disability
Employment, (nTIDE), program, which offers weekly online “Lunch and Learn”
sessions anyone can join. Both these and similar programs try to go beyond the
obvious, and figure out what roles are played by discrimination, education and
job training, benefits rules, and wider economic and social conditions.
10. The working from home
aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been an interesting experience for many disabled
people. A lot of us have been clamoring for a long time for more
opportunities to work from home. We hope these new opportunities will continue
when the pandemic wanes. That said, we want working from home to be a choice
for people with disabilities, not some kind of easier alternative to making
workplaces accessible.
There could be another 10 bits of
inside information to review. But these will do for now. When it comes to
significantly changing the employment figure for people with disabilities,
persuasion isn’t enough. We need a more critical look at the problem, creative
solutions, and a new commitment to make structural change. But we probably know
most of what we need to know already. We just review it occasionally, and maybe
view it all from some different angles. Finally, in a month dedicated to
getting disabled people working, it’s easy to forget that some disabled people
who might, theoretically, be able to work make the rational decision not to.
Sometimes, for some of us, it makes more sense to focus on our health and other
aspects of our independence. Work can be an important part of all that, but
it’s not the answer for all of our problems.
Instead of touting employment as
the way for disabled people to find a better life, maybe we should try making
life for disabled people better, so more of us are secure enough to pursue
employment from a position of strength.
^ This gives a good oversight
into the Issue of Employment and the Disabled. ^
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