WORKING WORLD: Low Unemployment Rate Means More Opportunities

By Tamar Asedo Sherman

Low unemployment rates offer more opportunities for people with disabilities to find rewarding jobs. And right now the national unemployment rate is at a historic low of 4.5 percent.

The gap between the percentage of people with disabilities who are employed and the percentage of those without disabilities who are employed is 40.3 percentage points, according to the 2005 Annual Disability Status Report. The employment rate of working-age people without disabilities was 77.6 percent in 2003, compared with 37.9 percent for working-age people with disabilities that year.

In 2004, the employment rate for people without disabilities rose 0.2 percentage points, to 77.8 percent, while the employment rate of people with disabilities declined 0.4 percentage points, to 37.5 percent, according to Andrew J. Houtenville, director of Cornell University’s Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Disability Demographics and Statistics (StatsRRTC).

That means there are fewer people with disabilities in the workforce relative to the total number of people employed. “The rise in the employment gap suggests that people with disabilities are not participating in the recovery from the 2001 recession,” Houtenville said.

Since only around 30 percent of people with disabilities are employed, one might assume that 70 percent of people with disabilities are unemployed. But that is incorrect; statistics can be misleading.

The employment rate is the percentage of all persons who have a job, whereas the unemployment rate is the percentage of persons in the labor force who do not have a job. The labor force includes people who have a job, are on layoff, or who actively searched for work in the last four weeks. People with disabilities who would like to work but are not actively seeking employment are not considered part of the labor force, therefore they are not counted among the unemployed.

A Cornell StatsRRTC Interactive Brief reports that 1.4 million people, or 6.4 percent of the working age population with disabilities, indicated that they were not working, but were actively looking for work. Among them, 49.4 percent had a physical disability, 71.8 percent had at least a high school education, and 62.1 percent had worked in the past 12 months.

Many more details are available at www.disabilitystatistics.org, an online resource provided by Cornell University as part of StatsRRTC, a collaborative effort with American Association of Persons with Disabilities and other research organizations. It is funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

One individual with a physical disability who has been greatly frustrated in her attempts to find a good job with benefits wrote to me asking for suggestions. Robin Olsen of North Carolina is a college graduate with MS who worked as an executive administrative assistant for 20 years in New York before moving south two years ago in pursuit of a milder climate and lower cost of living. She went on no less than 80 job interviews, mostly through employment agencies, and was only called back once for a second interview, but was not offered the job.

She thinks the scooter she uses might be the reason she was not offered any of those jobs, although as far as Ms. Olsen could tell, the scooter would not interfere with her ability to carry out the duties of the positions. Other than having difficulty walking, she does not have any other impairments. Certified as a Microsoft Officeâ„¢ Specialist, she says she scored in the 90s on tests administered by the employment agencies that arranged interviews, so she is highly qualified.

A friend put her in contact with an employer who hired her as a contract worker for an unspecified period of time with the understanding that the job would not lead to regular employment. Ms. Olsen feels she is underpaid and gets no benefits, so she would like to get a better job.

Meanwhile, she is going back to school to earn certification in Web, advertising, and graphic design at her local community college. She hopes these new skills will make her even more marketable or enable her to set up her own business at home.

My suggestion is to contact North Carolina’s vocational rehabilitation department for help in job placement or in setting up her own business, but now that she is working full time, it is difficult for her to access services. She said she has some flexibility in her work schedule, so she will keep trying to improve her situation and will send updates on new developments.

Tamar Asedo Sherman works as an employment specialist at UCP- Suffolk in Hauppauge, New York. She can be reached at action@ unitedspinal.org.