In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.
The year 2022 was a remarkable and historic time for the employment of people with disabilities. That’s according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) 2022 Year-End Special Edition, issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD), based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) Jobs Reports.
Employment trends in 2022 built upon the 2021 recovery from the pandemic recession—where people with disabilities reached beyond pre-COVID-19 levels and even pre-Great Recession levels. These trends are in stark contrast to those of their working counterparts without disabilities who have not yet reached pre-pandemic levels.
The average monthly employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities (ages 16-64) increased from 31.3 percent in 2021 to 34.8 percent in 2022, which was also higher than the 29.1 percent recorded in 2020 (during the height of the pandemic) and 30.9 percent recorded in 2019 (prior to the pandemic).
In contrast, for people without disabilities (ages 16-64), the employment-to-population ratio increased from 72.5 percent in 2021 to 74.4 percent in 2022, which was higher than the 70.0 percent recorded in 2020 but not above the 74.6 percent in 2019. The employment-to-population ratio, a key indicator, reflects the percentage of people who are working relative to the total population (the number of people working divided by the number of people in the total population multiplied by 100).
