Only 29,893 people with disabilities entered the workforce in 2018, a ten-fold decrease compared to ... [+] the more than 343,000 new jobs for people with disabilities two years ago.
GettyDuring his State of the Union address earlier this month, Trump claimed that “the unemployment rate for disabled Americans has reached an all-time low” under his presidency. Although the unemployment rate for Americans with disabilities is indeed lower than at any point in the Obama administration, we should take this with a grain of salt. The government has only tracked this data since 2008. So, by describing this as an “all-time low,” Trump is blowing the fact way out of proportion.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for Americans with disabilities went up from 6.1% in September of last year to 7% in December. In comparison, the unemployment rate for people without disabilities was 3.2%, over half the rate for those with disabilities.
In 2018, 37.6% of U.S. civilians with disabilities ages 18-64 living in the community had a job, compared to 77.2% for people without disabilities. Therefore, there is a 40-point gap in employment outcomes between people with and without disabilities.
The Disability Statistics Compendium, released earlier this month by the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire, shows that there has been a tenfold decrease in job gains for people with disabilities since 2016. The nonpartisan advocacy group RespectAbility compared this year’s report to those from previous years and found that nationwide, there were only 29,893 new jobs for people with disabilities in 2018. In 2017, there was an increase of over 110,000 new jobs for the disability population and 343,000 in 2016.
“The disability community needs to take a hard look to better understand the catastrophic results we are seeing in the job numbers,” Philip Kahn-Pauli, policy and practices director of RespectAbility said in a press release.
Out of the 50 states in the U.S., only 26 states saw more people with disabilities entering the workforce. California is indicative of the struggle to get more and more people with disabilities into the workforce. As documented by RespectAbility last year, over 19,000 Californians with disabilities had gained new jobs in 2017. However, those gains have since been wiped out with a net loss of over 21,000 workers with disabilities leaving the workforce and widening the gap in employment rates. Another report shows that California is among the five states with the highest volume of disability discrimination claims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
On the other side, some states are succeeding at hiring more workers with disabilities, despite the national rates. Arizona saw the most abundant single job gain among people with disabilities in 2018. The data shows that 17,419 Arizonans with disabilities got jobs in 2018, putting the Grand Canyon State far ahead of the rest of the country on getting people with disabilities into the workforce. With work culture increasing shifting to be entrepreneurial and startup-based, hours have become flexible, and more people are opting to work from home. These revolutionary structural changes are especially beneficial to employees with disabilities since they can easily schedule their workdays to accommodate their needs.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, there is still a long road ahead for ensuring every disabled American has the same opportunities and chances at success as non-disabled counterparts do.
Another element of complexity that is now thrown into the mix is artificial intelligence algorithms, which are widely used in screening potential job candidates. The automatic systems are meant to reduce bias in the recruitment process, but can often do the complete opposite. Technology cannot possibly learn the traits of people with disabilities since disability exists on a vast spectrum. For example, their appearance, voice or ability to make eye contact may not match what the software expects.
People with disabilities make up the largest minority group in America, yet they are too often the least accounted for when it comes to equal rights and anti-discrimination practices. Legislations need to be enacted to level out the playing field for potential employees with disabilities, instead of adopting practices that further widen the opportunity gap.