Unkind job picture for people with disabilities
As unemployment ticked down again in January, new data shows that Americans with disabilities struggled to reap the benefits of an improving job market.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday that unemployment among Americans with disabilities dropped to 12.9 percent in January, down from 13.5 percent at the end of last year.
However, the gains appear to be the result — at least in part — of fewer people with disabilities looking for work. In fact, the number of people within this group who were employed declined in January, as did the number considered part of the labor force, meaning that they were working or seeking a job.
Meanwhile, the labor market experienced unexpected growth, with the economy adding 243,000 jobs and unemployment among the general population dropping to 8.3 percent.
The Labor Department began tracking employment among people with disabilities in October 2008. There is not yet enough data compiled to establish seasonal trends among this population, so statistics for this group are not seasonally adjusted.
Data on people with disabilities covers those over the age of 16 who do not live in institutions. The first employment report specific to this population was made available in February 2009. Now, reports are released monthly.
Comments
evidence: Having had policies largely (although not always perhaps) based on evidence it is a very unwelcome development that there is no room for rational debate. Thirdly because of the selective nature of policies to encourage growth' I say selective because
they closely track the lobbying of a number of relatively small interest groups rather than responding to more wide-spread concerns in society. Fourthly, because at a time when the government should be concentrating on its economic programme such huge efforts
seem to be expended on attacks on equalities.All this makes me pretty convinced that the reasoning for cuts and changes to employment law in particular is spurious (or at least partly so) and that there is a deep seated (although seldom artculated) programme
of social re-engineering to strengthen the power and wealth of a particular minority at the expense of others. I am not naive enough to suggest for one moment that this pressure wasn't pre-existing underway by the previous administation, but I am concerned
about the accelerated pace of this and the real-world impacts to those in society given that we maybe heading into a particularly severe recession. I am also concerned that we are heading for a shattered society' where we maybe returning to class-warfare.
necessarily a bad thing. e.g. my partner just quit her job, she's got 3 months of unemployment benefits waiting for her at 60% pay and she fully intends to take them unless a better offer turns up in the meantime. Given how crappy her last job was, it's entirely
a good thing that she can do this. I think when developing labour policy we should always have the movie The Big Wednesday in the back of our minds. The kind of culture that produces crazy stuff like that is not possible in a world of full employment. We need
some small percentage of our population to be out of work and doing interesting shit, and we need that percentage to be from a more diverse background than trust fund kids and housewives. This is why the Beatles were so shit, because back in the day all the
people with actual talent who could have formed a good band were too busy working.
management difficulties of JG.The vast majority of workers who lose their jobs in a downturn are low-wage workers. The difference between the JG wage and their wage would be very small in fact. I also don't think the productivity gap (however measured) would
be that different also what is the contribution of a worker rebuilding a damaged water course or helping an elderly person with their daily needs versus the productivity of a person working in stall selling mobile phones on a small commission? One might hypothesise
that the former workers are very much more productive than that latter.Overall, I don't think the productivity loss be substantially large. Maybe even a productivity gain for society although the low-wage, high cost employers might not like it.What exactly
are the management difficulties of the JG? Already the unemployed in most advanced countries are in the public sector being managed by elaborate welfare and taxation systems. The only problem is they are not able to contribute. We have done a lot of research
on this question for Australia and it is clear that the administrative arrangements to implement a JG are not more of a challenge than the systems we already have in place.best wishesbill