My wise old grandmother always used to say, “Sometimes it takes a pandemic to straighten things out.”
Now I know what she meant. Last month, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about how one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that the jobless rate for disabled folks dropped from 12.3 percent two years ago to 5.8 percent in November of 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The story said that this is largely because employers, in their desperation to find good workers, embraced the concept of letting employees work from home, which has made it easier for disabled folks to find and do jobs.
That makes sense to me. I use a motorized wheelchair, and I haven’t had a regular job for more than forty years. By a regular job, I mean one where you have to go to an office every day. That’s too much for me. It’s not the job itself that wears me out. It’s all the rigid stuff that goes with it, such as the time and energy it takes to commute back and forth every day, especially in inclement weather. It’s getting up extra early every morning so I can make myself presentable and be at my desk by 9 a.m.
I’ve rigorously avoided taking on that type of work life, and yet I have been a productive person because I have been working from home since long before it was fashionable. As a writer, I’ve always done most of my composing from my home office space, even way back in the days when I wrote using a typewriter and sent my manuscripts to editors via the U.S. mail. Oh sure, I get out of the house quite often, for professional reasons like conducting interviews and attending events or just for running errands or socializing. But I can do so at my own pace.
When employers get creative in their thinking, they can find that there is plenty of talent out here and if it is given the proper conditions, it will flourish.
I’ve heard many people complain that even though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law more than thirty-two years ago, the unemployment rate for disabled folks has remained shockingly high. But I’m not surprised by this at all. I think the ADA has done about all it can do to smash the multiple barriers that stand in the way of disabled folks obtaining decent employment.
I don’t think we’ll make any significant progress on this front until employers get it through their heads that it is not the obligation of disabled folks to adapt ourselves to the parameters of the workplace, but vice-versa. When employers get creative in their thinking, they can find that there is plenty of talent out here and if it is given the proper conditions, it will flourish. But sometimes it takes a crisis to force some people to think creatively.
If there really is an employment boom going on because employers are embracing remote work, we’ll see how long it lasts. As the crisis subsides, we’ll see if employers retreat back to their convenient misconceptions of what it takes to be productive. Some CEOs, like Elon Musk of Twitter, have been pressuring their employees to return to the office full time. If that becomes the norm again, disabled workers will be the first to be let go.
Let’s hope this is a lasting change.