Employment Facts about People With Disabilities in the Workplace​

• Unemployment rates for persons with a disability (are) were higher than for persons without a disability across all educational attainment groups (BLS, 2018)
• Among adults with disabilities of working age (18 to 64), three out of ten (32%) work full or part-time, compared to eight out of ten (81%) of those without disabilities, a gap of forty-nine percentage points (N.O.D./Harris, 2000).
• In the year 2016, an estimated 36.2 percent (plus or minus 0.28 percentage points) of non-institutionalized, male or female, with a disability, ages 21-64, all races, regardless of ethnicity, with all education levels in the United States were employed. (Cornell University, 2018)
• The unemployment rate for persons with a disability was 9.2 percent in 2017, more than twice that of those with no disability (4.2 percent) (BLS, 2018)
  
  
• The more severe the disability, the less likely a person is to be employed. People with slight disabilities are 8 times more likely to be employed than people with very severe disabilities (64% versus 8% respectively (N.O.D./Harris,2000). 
• In 2016, in Indiana, the employment rate for those with a disability was 36.9% (Cornell University, 2018)
• Over the past fourteen years, the percentage of people who say they are unable to work has risen steadily from 29% to 43%. When looking at only the people who say they are able to work, fully 56% of people with disabilities are working, up from 46% in 1986, and the gap between people with and without disabilities shrinks from 49 percentage points to 25 percentage points (N.O.D./Harris 2000). 
• The total federal workforce is declining, but the number of disabled people employed within it is rising (Thornton and Lunt, 1997). 
• The labor force age 45-64 will grow faster than the labor force of any other age group as the baby boom generation (born 1946-64) continues to age (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections, 1999). 
• More than half of employed adults with disabilities report that they found their jobs through personal contact (Thornton and Lunt, 1997).

REFERENCES 
Bureau of Labor Statistics (1999), New 1998-2008 Employment Projections 
​Cornell University (2018), Disability Statistics: Employment Rate
National Organization on Disability/Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. (N.O.D./Harris) (2000) 2000 N.O.D./Harris Survey of Americans With Disabilities 
Thornton, P and Lunt, N (1997) 'Employment Policies for Disabled Persons in Eighteen Countries: A review' 'United States', A University of New York, Social Research Unit paper, Ottawa, Can.: Global Applied D
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2018), News Release, Persons with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics - 2017