Disproportionate impact of the Great Recession on workers with disabilities

It is often suggested that workers with disabilities are the first to be fired in bad economic times and the last to be hired once conditions improve. The recent introduction of new, state-of-the-art disability measures into the monthly U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), coinciding with the early stages of the current recession, offers an unprecedented opportunity to test the last-hired-first-fired hypothesis over one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression. This study tracks the employment of people with disabilities, using a nationally representative household survey, from late 2008 until mid-2010. As of this writing, the size of the workforce with disabilities declined by 13.6 percent over a one-year period, more than three times the rate (4.2 percent) for the workforce without disabilities. The number of employed workers with more significant disabilities (people with difficulty conducting daily activities) declined by 22.7 percent. Especially large declines were also seen for younger workers, men, people with less education, and people with medium skilled occupations. As the recession deepened, the unemployment rate continued to increase for workers with disabilities even after that for workers without disabilities at leveled off, reaching 17.2 percent of labor force participants with disabilities by October 2009, compared to 9.2 percent for labor force participants without disabilities. These figures compare unfavorably even to those of racial/ethnic minorities, who also experienced disproportionate effects of the downturn. Disability employment policy needs to focus particular attention on keeping people with disabilities employed and participating in the workforce during poor economic times.