People with Disabilities
Problem: People with disabilities often live in poverty and are more likely to work only part-time or to be unemployed.
Solution: Society's perceptions can shift into a more positive light from 'people with disabilities' to 'people with abilities.' Employers can modify job opportunities by including job accommodations and/or job coaches to better include people with disabilities.
People with disabilities can often live with the hardship of unemployment and a lack of purpose in their lives. In 2017, slightly more than one quarter, 26 percent, of working-age people with disabilities, lived in poverty, more than twice the rate of their nondisabled peers. (Altiraifi, 2020)
Though statistics differ across diagnoses, people with autism face unemployment, 85% of college grads with autism are unemployed. (Pesce, Market Watch) “The unemployment rate for people with Intellectual. Disabilities, or ID, were more than twice as high as the general population's (Special Olympics, 2014). Further darkening the employment picture is that most people with Intellectual Disabilities work part-time and many for less than the minimum wage. “… Industries can pay Chris” (who is someone with disabilities)“and roughly 150 other workers … below the federal minimum wage of $7.50 an hour because of a 1938 provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act that permits employers, who apply to the Department of Labor for a waiver, to pay lower wages to people with disabilities.“(Dejean, 2017) Many people with disabilities are being paid way below the minimum wage, and it's perfectly legal. Though recently, several states have now put into law that these people be paid at the federally mandated minimum wage.
