Disabled workers gain space in heated US market

The strong post-pandemic US job market is giving impetus to a group often left on the fringes of the economy: workers with disabilities.

Employers, desperate for employees, are reconsidering employment requirements, reviewing hiring processes and working with nonprofit groups to recruit candidates they might have previously ignored.

At the same time, the newfound openness of companies to remote work has brought opportunities for people whose disabilities make face-to-face work and daily commuting difficult or impossible.

As a result, the proportion of working adults with disabilities has increased over the past two years well beyond the pre-pandemic level and has even surpassed the gains of people without disabilities.

In interviews and surveys, people with disabilities report that they are getting not just more job offers, but better ones, with higher pay, greater flexibility and more openness to providing conditions that previously required a struggle to obtain.

“The new world we live in has opened the door a little wider,” said Gene Boes, president and CEO of the Northwest Center, a Seattle-based organization that helps people with disabilities become more independent. “Doors are opening wider because there is more demand for labor.”

Samir Patel, 42, who lives in the Seattle area, has a college degree and certifications in accounting. But he also has autism spectrum disorder, which made it difficult to find a steady job. He spent most of his career in temporary jobs found through recruitment agencies. The longest lasted just over a year; many lasted only a few months.

This summer, though, Patel landed a full-time permanent job as an accountant with a local nonprofit group. The job brought him a 30% income increase, along with retirement benefits, more predictable hours, and other perks. Now he’s considering buying a house, traveling and dating — steps that seemed impossible without the stability of a steady job.

“It’s a confidence gain,” he said. “There were times when I felt left behind.”

Patel, whose disability affects his speech and can make communication difficult, worked with an employment coach at the Northwest Center to help him. While Patel generally prefers working in the office, his new employer also allows him to work remotely when he needs to — a big help on days when he finds office sensory overload overwhelming.

Federal law prohibits most employers from discriminating against people with disabilities and requires them to make reasonable adjustments to include these people. But research has found that discrimination remains common: A 2017 study found that jobseekers who declared a disability were 26% less likely to interest prospective employers.

Even when they do get a job, disabled workers encounter barriers to success, from bathroom doors they can’t open on their own to hostile co-workers.

Workers with disabilities — as well as other groups that face obstacles, such as people with criminal records — tend to disproportionately benefit from buoyant labor markets, when employers have more incentives to seek out untapped talent pools. But when recessions come, those opportunities quickly disappear.

“We have a ‘last-in, first-out’ labor market, and people with disabilities are often among the last-in and first-out,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group, an organization of Washington Research.

Remote work, however, has the potential to break this cycle, at least for some workers. In a new study, Ozimek found that employment increased for workers with disabilities in all sectors as the job market improved, following the usual pattern.

But it has improved especially quickly in industries and occupations where remote work is more common. And many economists believe the shift to remote work, unlike the overheated labor market, is likely to be lasting.

More than 35% of Americans with disabilities ages 18 to 64 had jobs in September, up from 31% just before the pandemic — a record in the 15 years of government reporting. Among adults without disabilities, 78% were employed, but their employment rates have only returned to their pre-pandemic level.

“Adults with disabilities have seen employment rates recover much more quickly,” said Ozimek. “That’s good news, and it’s important to understand whether it’s a temporary thing or a permanent thing. My conclusion is that not only is it a permanent thing, it’s going to get better.”

The sudden adoption of remote work during the pandemic has been met with some exasperation by some disability rights leaders, who have spent years trying, often unsuccessfully, to convince employers to offer more flexibility to their employees.

“Remote work is something our community has championed for decades, and it’s a little frustrating that corporate America has said it’s too complicated, it’s going to lose productivity, and now all of a sudden it’s like: Sure, let’s do this,” he said. Charles-Edouard Catherine, director of corporate and government relations at the National Organization on Disability.

Still, he said the change is welcome. For Catherine, who is blind, not having to commute to work means not coming home with cuts on her forehead and bruises on her leg. And for people with more severe mobility limitations, remote work is the only option.

Many employers are reducing working from home and encouraging or requiring employees to return to the office. But experts expect remote and hybrid work to remain much more common and more widely accepted than before the pandemic.

Covid can also reshape the legal landscape. In the past, employers were often resistant to offering remote work as a solution for workers with disabilities, and judges rarely required them to do so. But that could change now, as so many companies have managed to adapt to remote work in 2020, said Arlene S. Kanter, director of the Disability Law and Policy Program at Syracuse University School of Law.

“If other people can show that they can do their work well from home, as they did during Covid, then people with disabilities, for the sake of adaptation, shouldn’t be denied that right,” Kanter said.

Kanter and other experts warn that not all people with disabilities want to work remotely. And many jobs cannot be done at home. A disproportionate share of workers with disabilities are employed in commerce and other sectors where remote work is uncommon. Despite recent gains, people with disabilities are still less likely to be employed and more likely to live in poverty than people without disabilities.

“When we say it’s historically high, that’s absolutely true, but we don’t want to send the wrong message and pat ourselves on the back,” Catherine said. “We’re still twice as likely to be unemployed and we’re still underpaid when we’re lucky enough to be employed.”

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves