The employment of people with and without disabilities in an age of insecurity

Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) holds that persons with disabilities must be given equal access to jobs for which they are capable of performing the essential functions, and it mandates that employers provide reasonable accommodation to accomplish this goal. The passage of the ADA raised expectations about employment among persons with disabilities, but this expectation has been tempered by growing job insecurity throughout the economy. In this article, I review the major trends in employment in the United States and show that persons with disabilities have experienced these trends in exaggerated form. Thus women with disabilities have experienced substantial increases in employment rates, while men with disabilities have seen their employment rates decrease. Persons with disabilities have experienced a disproportionate amount of the growth in part-time work. Overall, persons with disabilities have become one of the principal ways of accommodating change in the demand for labor.