Employer Perspectives of People with Disabilities

The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) today released "Employer Perspectives of People with Disabilities.
It is available from the their website in either Word or Pdf.

It's a decent brochure with some good resources and information for Employers, even if the title seems a bit misleading.

Photo courtesy of Evil Erin

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Dept. of Labor to Start Posting Statistics on Employment of Individuals with Disabilities

Federal Department of Labor is now posting information on employment of those with disabilities.

"In June 2008, questions were added to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to identify persons with a disability in the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older. The addition of these questions allowed BLS to begin releasing monthly labor force data from the CPS for persons with a disability." - BLS.gov

They've cut the table with employment data of those without disabilities, and that you can see the scary statistics of those with disabilities: 20% of those with disabilities are employed as compared to 65% of those without disabilities over the age of 16. When those over 65 are removed from the calculations, the stats are 32% to 75.7% for men and 29% to 66.9% for women (percent of those with a disability employed to those without a disability).

For those stat geeks the tables are available for down load and your own slicing and dicing.


ODEP Press Release
New monthly data series on the employment status of people with a disability (with tables)- BLS

Photo Courtesy of Jim Bowen

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1 in 5 Americans have a disability

Reporting on recently released census results, Medical News Today reports "About one in five U.S. residents - 19 percent - reported some level of disability in 2005, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. These 54.4 million Americans are roughly equal to the combined total populations of California and Florida."

On the working front,

Nearly half (46 percent) of people age 21 to 64 with a disability were employed, compared with 84 percent of people in this age group without a disability. Among those with disabilities, 31 percent with severe disabilities and 75 percent with nonsevere disabilities were employed. People with difficulty hearing were more likely to be employed than those with difficulty seeing (59 percent compared with 41 percent)."

Census Homepage
Census Report "Americans with Disabilities" pdf

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Walgreens and a great approach to employment for those with disabilities

In case you missed it. Here's a link to an ABC piece about Walgreens distribution center in SC where 40% of the employees have disabilities. <Link>
In a 2006 piece by Diversity World, Randy Lewis of Walgreens talks about how he came up with the program. He talks about preparation for the opening of this distribution center and how they connected with local agencies serving individuals with disabilities, as well as schools to develop a network of employees. He describes a strong partnership between community and government agencies.

"We opened up a training center there. One agency provided the building. We provided the equipment. One agency provides the trainers. Not only are the trainees trained on how to do the job, but also on social skills – how to interact properly with other people. Those skills are important when you are working in a building with six hundred other people. "

Walgreens' site has information on their program and how other businesses can benefit from their experience.

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