Americans with disabilities hit hard in downturn
December 6th, 2008‘Last hired, first fired’
From US News & World Report:
The recession is hitting Americans with disabilities particularly hard. Already facing staggering rates of unemployment, they are now experiencing a sharp increase in layoffs.
“People with disabilities tend to be the last hired and the first fired,” says Rick Diamond, director of employment services at Disability Network/Lakeshore, a disability rights nonprofit based in Holland, Mich.
Advocates nationwide say they’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of their clients who have been laid off. And if data from 2007 – as well as from previous recessions – holds true for this year, people with disabilities will be cut from their jobs at a rate disproportionate to that of nondisabled workers.
The disparity in employment between people with and without disabilities has already been growing. In 2007, according to last month’s Disability Status Report, only 36.9 percent of working-age individuals with disabilities were employed. The year before, it was 37.7 percent. But the employment rate of people without disabilities, at 79.7 percent, didn’t change.
As the recession has deepened, programs serving people with disabilities are increasingly threatened by government funding cuts and a dropoff in charitable giving.
Nearly a quarter of working-age Americans with disabilities were living in poverty in 2007, compared to fewer than one in 10 people without disabilities.
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