People with disabilities shared in Friday’s good news from the U.S. Department of Labor, with the unemployment rate among this population making a commensurate drop with the national average, which went below 8% for the first time 44 months, according to this CBS News report.
You can always find the latest figures on the homepage of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). Despite almost a half-point improvement from August’s rate, the 13.5% unemployment rate among people with disabilities still trends almost twice the rate of the rest of Americans.
Chris Middleton of Bloomberg Businessweek wrote that one of the largest increases took place in the transportation and warehousing sector, which added 17,000 jobs in September. This is an area where many individuals with disabilities commonly find employment, performing light assembly, sorting, packaging, shipping, and other manual labor tasks.
Another Bloomberg reporter, Alex Kowalski, said that more than half a million people also took part-time positions. While teenagers were the largest beneficiaries of these gains, temporary and contract labor positions are another area where people with disabilities oftentimes find work opportunities that provide a source of income that allows them to become more independent from social support.
Here in Massachusetts, unemployment was already trending lower than the national average, even thought the rate ticked slightly upwards in August to 6.3%. Framingham’s Metro West Daily News noted that Massachusetts is one of three New England states to have a jobless rate lower than the overall U.S., along with New Hampshire and Vermont.
Patch.com editor Mark Ouellette provided a town-by-town breakdown for several eastern Massachusetts communities, taken from a report published by the state’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Each of the 18 municipalities have shown a net reduction in unemployed workers since the beginning of 2012, although Ouelette cautions again over-optimism, particularly with regards to his Stoneham beat, writing that seasonal employment plays a role.
Can people with disabilities benefit from the sense of optimism that largely accompanies the newest figures? With October being National Disability Employment Awareness Month, the subject is certainly out in the mainstream media. Letters like this one in the Lansing State Journal by Doug Stites of Capital Area Michigan Works remind workforce recruiters and business owners of the positive qualities these individuals bring to a project, including these bullet points:
• People with disabilities possess valuable problem-solving skills because they are experts in finding creative ways to perform tasks others may take for granted.
• Employees with disabilities have proved to be dependable, dedicated and productive employees.
• People with disabilities have better retention rates than their nondisabled peers, according to a 2006 report from the U.S. Department of Education.
Do you see more job opportunities in your community, both overall and for individuals with disabilities? Share in the comments section below.
Image by Dean Meyers.