Where Are the Jobs for People with Disabilities?

by John M. Williams

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that more than 1.1 million jobs have been created in the last 10 months. Most of these jobs have been created in the service sector and are low-paying.

The July 6 issue of The Washington Post reported that there are fewer federal employees with disabilities today than there were in 1994. The story stated that, “the number of federal employees with severe disabilities has declined by nearly 20% over the last decade.” The number of federal employees with disabilities is 25,531 compared to 31,680 in 1994. This decline does not bode well for the federal government which claims to be a model employer for other levels of government and the private sector.

The federal government is not the only place where jobs for people with disabilities are not part of the recovery. In researching this column, I made calls to corporations, business groups , disability organizations, and government agencies to find out if there are jobs for people with disabilities in today’s market circumstance. My calls to the American Association of People with Disabilities, American Foundation for the Blind, Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc., United Cerebral Palsy Association and the National Stuttering Association resulted in being told that none of their members had reported an increase in hiring during this recovery.

Additionally, calls to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Society for Human Resource Managers, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Business Research Group concluded with the same answer, “We do not have any numbers or way of learning if people with disabilities were hired during this recovery.”

While no one said they could not produce numbers showing an increase in employment among people with disabilities, privately they said they doubted it.

Rehabilitation offices in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania told me that people with disabilities were being placed in some computer training programs or hired by McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Overall, however, the increase in employment for people with disabilities was minimal. Spokespeople at the national headquarters of Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target told me it was up to individual stores to hire people with disabilities and they do not keep records on the number of people with disabilities nationwide working for their stores.

I called school districts in Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, Maryland, to learn if they were hiring teachers with disabilities and was told that such information was not available.

In a survey I did of 100 people on my e-mail list, 19 reported they did not know of any increase in jobs among people with disabilities. Six of these 19 people have jobs. All of them are college graduates.

Of course, people with disabilities have jobs. I know scores. The majority of them have had jobs all, or most, of their lives. They are highly skilled and motivated.

But what about the 70% of working age people with disabilities who are not employed? Are they less skilled? Are they undereducated? Are they voiceless? Are they isolated from their communities? Have they given up job hunting? Have organizations and people whose responsibility includes assisting people with disabilities in obtaining jobs given up?

I do not know why people with disabilities are being left out of the job recovery. It does pain me to learn that people with disabilities are not being hired. I know the country cannot afford economically to have millions of people with disabilities year after year, decade after decade, unemployed. And neither should we tolerate it.

There are short-term and long-term goals needed to employ people with disabilities.

Short-term: if unemployed people with disabilities lack the skills to compete with able- bodied individuals then they must be trained now. For incentive reasons, increased tax credits must be given to employers to train and then employ people with disabilities. But training is not enough. Jobs must follow.

This training must include attitudinal training. It is said that people with disabilities have abilities, regardless of their disabilities. How widespread is this belief among public and private employers? If employers recognized the abilities of people with disabilities, why aren’t more people with disabilities employed? The training programs must reach into the inner cities and Indian reservations where adults and children with disabilities are forgotten. All races and both genders must be included.

Long-term: children with disabilities must be better educated and trained so they can compete. These children must be given access to the tools they need to compete. Children with disabilities must be given employment opportunities during school breaks. Money from the public and private sectors must be allocated for training and education.

The United States has a critical shortage of special education teachers, engineers, scientists, medical researchers, doctors and other professions. Public and private sector employers must recognize that people with disabilities can fill these shortages.

People with disabilities must be included in this recovery now and forever.

John Williams has been writing about assistive technology for 25 years. A sample of his book Assistive Technologies: Creating a Universe of Opportunities for People with Disabilities can be seen at www.atn-ctcf.org.