- Categories
- December 1st, 2009
-
Op-ed: Employment Situation Bleak
December 1st, 2009
By William Peace, Bad Cripple
One person who I can always count on for a sober assessment of the social and economic conditions people with a disability find themselves in is Joseph Shapiro. Author of Nothing About Us Without Us, Shapiro often makes astute points about the economic plight of people with a disability. When I was driving yesterday I heard Shapiro on NPR commenting about an ever present and worsening problem for people with a disability–employment or more accurately rampant unemployment.
In October the national unemployment rate hit 10.2% Economists and the mass media freaked out. The grim unemployment figures made headlines nation wide. The national news led off its programing with stories about what this means to the country and the Obama administration. When I saw these reports I yawned, bored in the extreme. Was I being selfish? I suppose but what I immediately thought of when I heard about the national unemployment rate was the fact that the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor Surveys estimates that 21 million out of 26 million people with a disability are not even in the work force. 21 million people do not simply give up. The vast majority of these people want to work but after years and even a decade of looking came to the only logical conclusion: people with a disability face an uphill struggle to enter the work force. One could even make the case the struggle to find work is hopeless. Here I am not referring to a job of choice but any job at all. Combine the overwhelming odds against finding employment with the fact many people with a disability rely on government health care in which there is a disincentive to work (they lose health care if they earn too much). The net result is that the vast majority of people with a disability are only marginally attached to the work force in this country. This creates not only economic hardship, a loss of self worth, but further isolates people with a disability socially. Like it or not, we often judge others by what they do for a living and economic resources dictate one’s lifestyle.
I wish I had a solution to the unemployment problem people with a disability routinely encounter. Read the rest of the article.