The Employment of People with Disabilities: Federal Data Sources and Trends (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Jan. 22, 2007 |
| Report Number |
RL30653 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Dennis M. Roth, Domestic Social Policy Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
Congress has enacted major legislation related to the employment of individuals with disabilities. In 1938, the Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which, among other provisions, established a reduced wage for the employment of individuals whose earning capacity was impaired by age or physical or mental deficiency or injury (Section 14). The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 banned discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere on the basis of disability, and the Civil Rights Act (CRA) of 1991 allowed people bringing employment discrimination suits to seek compensatory and punitive damages under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In 1999, Congress turned its attention to the supply side of the labor market in the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act by encouraging people with severely limiting health conditions or impairments to increase their work effort without loss of government-provided health care coverage.
Learning whether public policy is on the right track is especially important today because of the direct relationship between age and disability. As the incidence of disabling health conditions rises with age and as the large baby-boom generation has been entering middle-age, disability is likely to become increasingly common and (potentially) costly to society. Changing economic conditions and the varying definitions of disability in programs and surveys make it difficult to gauge the success of the legislation in enhancing the employment prospects of people with disabilities. So, too, does the lack of accurate, consistent statistics over time on the labor force status of individuals with disabilities. Despite the charge of the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities (1998-2002) to develop a valid, reliable measure of the employment rate of working-age adults with disabilities, progress toward that end has been very slow.
To mitigate the data shortcomings with regard to conducting trend analysis, researchers have utilized multiple databases to determine if they are telling the same story. In general, they are. Despite the strong state of the economy through 2000, full implementation of the ADA's employment provisions in the mid-1990s, and the employment rate of all working-age persons with disabilities failed to improve in recent decades. Analysts have examined a variety of explanations for the lagging employment opportunities of people with disabilities, including the seemingly increased share of adults with disabilities so severe that they report being unable to work; expansion of the Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income programs; and enactment and implementation of the ADA.
The results of this research have prompted some to suggest that enhancing the employment prospects of all members of the population with disabilities might involve subsidizing the cost of employer accommodations and helping those already employed retain their jobs, among other things. This report will be updated as warranted.
