People with Disabilities 2017 Labor Force Summary
The above picture is of a gentleman in a suit sitting at a table with his laptop open working
This past summer, for people with disabilities, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics came released its labor force characteristics report for 2017. It was an interesting report giving us detailed information about how our community is working.
18.7 percent of people with a disability were employed in 2017 they stated while 65.7 percent of people without a disability were employed. Ouch! That is a huge difference. The estimated number of people in the U.S. is somewhere between 54-60 million so if we take the average of the two, 57 million people with a disability, at 18.7% that means that 10,659.000 people with disabilities were working in the U.S. in the year 2017. Is that good or bad? We can break that down statistically and logically. In 2017, the unemployment rate of a disabled person was 9.2% while it was 4.2% for a person with a disability.
So is an 18.7% employment rate good? According to the 2017 data, nearly half of all persons with a disability were age 65 and over which was three times larger than those without a disability. Traditionally in our country, a person tries to retire at 65 years old. I know that is changing and more people are working longer if they can to supplement their retirement income.
Unfortunately, in our country Ageism which is defined as prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person's age and as it pertains to employment is a real issue. Generally, workers aged 65 or older have a much more difficult time getting and keeping a job than “younger” workers. If you compound Ageism with a disability, the prospects for employment get even worse. I don’t have any statistics for my thoughts on Ageism and disability, however, I do think it is logical to think this way. Why does that matter?
Well, if we remove half of the disabled population aged 65 and above of @57 million people who may be looking for work, we now have approximately 28.5 million people who have a disability who may be looking for work. If we then believe that 18.7 percent or 10,659,000 of all people with a disability were employed in 2017 we need to recalculate the percentage out of 37.5 million people which would mean that 37.4% of people with disabilities were employed in 2017. This is a better number of course but not nearly good enough. Our goal is to be the same, 65.7% of people without a disability who were employed. That would mean we should have if they so desire approximately 24,637,500 disabled workers in the workforce.
There are many unnerving statistics in the report. Statistics such as the employment-population ratios were much lower for disabled people that for those who weren’t disabled. The unemployment rates for people with disabilities were higher for people with disabilities than without and across all educational groups. This one, in particular, upsets me because it demonstrates that people in our community who are fighting to get an education to compete in the workforce continue to be at a disadvantage to employment. This next one bothers me as well. 32% of workers with disabilities were employed part-time compared with 17% with no disability. So of the approximate 10,659,000 in our community who are working, 3,410,880 were employed part-time and more than likely had no benefits.
Workers with a disability were more concentrated in these occupations; service, production, transportation, and material moving than were those without a disability. Workers with a disability were less likely to work in management, professional and related occupations than those without a disability.
Our community was more likely to be employed in government than non-disabled workers. Workers who are disabled are more likely to be self-employed than non-disabled workers. Our community is less likely to be employed as private wage and salary workers than those without a disability.
I figure that about now you are saying to yourself, so what! Who cares? None of this is going to help me find work? You are right! These are just numbers. The question is what will you do with them moving forward?
The first question you need to ask yourself is “do you I want to work”? The next question you need to ask yourself is “can I work with my disability”? Assuming the answer to both questions is yes then the next question you need to ask is “how do I go about doing so”? If you have gotten this far, you need to then ask yourself what you would like to do?
So you have decided what kind of work you would like to do, now you have to figure out if you have the credentials to do move forward. Do you need a college degree? Do you need a certificate of some sort? Do you need specific training? These are daunting questions to ask yourself. However, it needs to be done.
I suggest you seek help as going this alone can be a challenge. If you are on Social Security Disability (SSDI), you need to contact your local SSA office and inform them that you want to go to work. There is a process in going back to work if you are on SSDI. You must follow this process to avoid conflicts with SSA. You need to read the SSA Redbook on returning to work. Do it right!
My suggestion is to contact a Ticket to Work Employment Network. They are organizations approved by the SSA to assist you in going back to work from being on SSDI
If you are working with a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor, ask them for guidance. They can guide you through a process. Assist you with some sort of training and help place you in a position. If you are not receiving SSDI or you are not working with a VR Counselor my suggestion would be to go to a local community college and ask to see a guidance counselor, talk to family and friends.
If you think that you would need to get educated or skilled before attempting to go to work, I would suggest that you research the qualifications for your desired jobs and then go from there.
Let’s talk about disable jobs. So what kind of jobs are there for people with disabilities? Pretty much the same jobs for everyone else. We have a good blog on our site called “Jobs for People with Disabilities”, read it! It will give you a good head start anyway.
You can go to our jobs page and look at all of our jobs as they come in a minute by minute. disABLEDperson.com receives thousands of new jobs daily from proactive employers looking to hire from our community. Don’t be shy, come and check it out and all of our resources. You can even sign up for our email job alerts to have your jobs of interest email to you on a daily basis as they come in.