Disability and work
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The most tangible goal of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, held every October, is to increase employment rates and employment opportunities for Americans with disabilities. Of course, this assumes that people with disabilities want to work, which is, in most cases, a perfectly valid assumption.
But it is also important to dig deeper into the complex relationship that disabled people often have with work and paid employment. There are more than just one or two obvious barriers for disabled people in the workplace and job market. Disabled people’s feelings and aspirations towards work should not be oversimplified. Generally, disabled people want to work. But their feelings towards work are often complex in very specific ways.
According to the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Disability Research, the U.S. labor force participation rate for people with disabilities was 41.2% and the employed population rate was 37.9% in August 2023. What each figure represents exactly is less significant than the fact that both were almost a full percentage point higher than July’s figures, which itself were at the high end of their long-term historical trends.
This can be interpreted in a few ways: The month-by-month figures indicate relatively high employment rates for Americans with disabilities, which is undoubtedly an encouraging sign for people with disabilities who are looking for work.
At the same time, these rates represent only a slight narrowing of the large employment gap between people with disabilities and those without. This gap has widened, narrowed, and fluctuated depending on the economic situation, but it has always been very large. For as long as we have reliable records, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has been higher than for any other working-age population, and the gap has been substantial.
Most efforts to chip away at this gap, like National Disability Employment Awareness Month, focus on convincing employers to hire more people with disabilities. But it’s always worth questioning the assumption behind most disability employment efforts: that people with disabilities actually want to work.
If asked bluntly if they would like to work, most people of working age with disabilities would say yes, especially if they were only allowed a simple yes or no answer. But if allowed to elaborate, a great many would give a more nuanced and conditional answer. Not all people with disabilities want to work today, tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in working someday, under certain conditions, with the right support infrastructure, and for a paycheck. And many people with disabilities have a different idea of “work” than a typical “9 to 5” job in some ways. At the same time, many of the main things they expect from a job are the same as everyone else’s: benefits that they’re not willing to give up just for a “chance.”
Before October ends, it’s worth considering some of the factors that make work thoughts and aspirations more complicated for people with disabilities. To get started, consider the following:
Many people with disabilities are able and willing to work, but work irregularly.
Many people with disabilities are ready and willing to work a standard 9-to-5 job without any unique challenges that cannot be solved with basic accommodations. But many others with disabilities can only imagine working a less conventional schedule, determined by their disability, financial situation, and occupation. People with disabilities who cannot work full-time for various reasons may be able to work reduced hours per week or month, work a seasonal schedule, or do freelance work, which typically emphasizes tasks completed rather than hours worked.
What about remote work? There is some evidence that the expansion of work-from-home opportunities during the pandemic is partly responsible for the recent increase in disability employment. Working from home is something that at least some disabled people have always promoted as a way to make the work itself more feasible. But with the current pressure against remote work from various quarters, it remains to be seen whether these opportunities for disabled people will survive and expand, or disappear.
People with disabilities, like everyone else, are concerned about how their pay will be paid.
Putting aside the value of volunteering, personal rewards, and utopian visions of a cashless society, people in the modern economy generally expect to be paid for the work they do. They expect to be paid for their time and effort, not just for “results.” And increasingly, people with disabilities expect to be paid to the same basic standards and conditions as other workers.
Paying workers with disabilities below the minimum wage may have once been a reasonable way to create employment opportunities for them. This was based on the assumption that jobs at regular wages would always be out of reach for people with disabilities. The phrase “anything is better than nothing” perfectly captures this mindset, and it remains the most common justification for subminimum wages today. However, these arguments have long since faded, and the practice of paying some workers with disabilities below the minimum wage may be coming to an end.
Disabled people are sometimes said to be desperate for work. But they also care about pay. We should not expect them to be unconditionally grateful for literally any job or opportunity just because they are disabled. Some disabled people may feel that way. And at least some disabled people care more about job satisfaction and their contribution to society than about pay. But building this idea into employment policies just for certain disabled people is no longer justifiable, even if it was justifiable at all.
This principle applies beyond formal subminimum wage programs. People with disabilities increasingly resent being asked to work for free or at a discount in the freelance market. It is no longer enough to be allowed to work or invited to contribute simply because of exposure, experience, things to do, or because work is considered a virtue in American culture.
Many disabled people rely on vital welfare benefits and it is all too easy for them to lose them.
There are many different eligibility rules for financial and medical benefits available to people with disabilities at the federal and state levels, but most of the benefits that people with disabilities need to cover the costs of their disability may be denied if they work too many hours, earn too much per month, or have too much savings.
Despite helpful “work incentives,” working people with disabilities risk losing not only financial benefits like disability and SSI, but also stable, full-service health care like Medicare and Medicaid. And the eligibility criteria for programs like Social Security Disability (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are outdated, set at stingy and restrictive rates 40 years ago that make little economic sense today. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a job that pays a very high salary and has generous, robust health insurance, people with disabilities must constantly balance work and benefits. It’s an emotional and relentless mathematical calculation that repeats itself every month and is nearly impossible to escape.
Efforts to improve this situation have been active in recent years, but are still in their early stages. A new bill, the SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, has been introduced in Congress with unusual bipartisan support. The bill would raise the maximum savings amounts for SSI eligibility from $2,000 for individuals and $3,000 for couples (the limits were last adjusted nearly 40 years ago) to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for couples. This partially resolves one particular conflict between work and benefits. But there is still much work to be done to meaningfully remove this long-standing barrier to employment and financial goals for people with disabilities.
Sometimes deciding not to work or look for work is the right choice.
Sometimes the most rational choice a disabled person can make is to address their mental and physical health rather than their job or career. Disabled people also often have to balance their career aspirations between what they know is theoretically possible and whether they can responsibly handle both work and self-care responsibilities at a given time. Disabled people may ask themselves “Can I work now?” and the answer is “yes”, but then ask “Should I work now?” and rationally answer “Maybe not”.
Disability employment efforts, while seemingly sharing the same goal, have completely different motivations. People with disabilities want equal opportunities and support to achieve their employment goals. What people with disabilities don’t want or need are policies designed to drive them into work by threatening to take away benefits or by redefining disability to exclude them from disability support programs. Optimism about the possibilities for people with disabilities in the job market should not be used to shame or punish people with disabilities who are not working at any point. Clear examples of laziness, lack of ambition, or mindless reliance on benefits may in fact be people who have made a perfectly wise decision not to work. Disability employment programs need to take this fact into account.
Changing employer attitudes is important, but it is not enough by itself to improve employment for people with disabilities. Improved education, job training, and supports are essential, but are not enough. Strengthening enforcement of disability rights laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, helps, but is also not enough.
Work itself, and the structures that surround it, needs to be updated and redesigned: it needs to be more accommodating, more flexible, and above all, more focused on helping disabled people achieve their real work and career goals.