Projecting Potential Demand for Workers with Disabilities

Forthcoming, Monthly Labor Review Projecting Potential Demand for Workers with Disabilities Douglas Kruse Rutgers University and National Bureau of Economic Research dkruse@rci.rutgers.edu Lisa Schur Rutgers University lschur@rci.rutgers.edu Mohammed Ali Rutgers University maali1969@hotmail.com School of Management and Labor Relations Rutgers University 94 Rockafeller Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854 March 2, 2010 Acknowledgments: This research is part of the Demand Side Employment Placement Models ("Employer Demand") project, funded by a five-year grant from the U.S Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), Grant No. H133A060033. Valuable comments have been made by Steve Kaye, Peter Blanck, and other members of the project.  Abstract: This paper matches BLS occupational projections for 2008-2018 to Census data on disability prevalence and O*Net data on ability requirements to create (a) baseline projections of the expected changes in employment of people with disabilities, and (b) estimates of the potential for increased employment of people with disabilities based on the ability requirements of growing occupations. One finding is that people with disabilities tend to be underrepresented in the fastest-growing occupations, so that their projected employment by 2018 is 104,000 jobs lower than if they were proportionately distributed across occupations. For most of the 52 specific abilities identified in O*Net, there is substantial job growth in occupations where the ability is of little or no importance, indicating significant potential for increased employment of people with disabilities. For each of the specific abilities, the paper presents the occupations with the greatest job growth in which the ability is not important, representing the most promising occupations for people who lack the specific ability. An analysis of education and training requirements indicates that there is a large number of well-educated non-employed people with disabilities who can help fill projected job growth and alleviate labor shortages. Finally, we present growth in part-time, home-based, and computer-using jobs, which may be especially appropriate for many people with disabilities. The results provide a useful planning tool for employers, people with disabilities, vocational planners, educators, and policy-makers. Introduction Employment of people with disabilities has been a growing public and policy concern over the past two decades. A number of policy initiatives have attempted to decrease employment barriers and increase employment demand for people with disabilities (Blanck et al., 2007). In particular, Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was motivated largely by the desire to improve employment opportunities for qualified people with disabilities by ending employer discrimination, encouraging workplace accommodations, and making workplaces accessible (Blanck, Hill, Siegel, and Waterstone, 2003, 2005). While employment levels vary by definition of disability, it is clear that no matter the definition used, employment levels of people with disabilities remain far below those of non-disabled people (Kruse and Schur, 2002; Stapleton and Burkhauser, 2003; Yelin and Trupin, 2003). The most recent estimate is that in January of 2010, the employment rates of working-age men and women with disabilities were 30.2% and 27.2% respectively, less than half the rates of 75.7% and 66.9% among working-age men and women without disabilities. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t06.htm, accessed March 1, 2010. Their low employment rates contribute to high rates of poverty (Kruse, 1998; Schur, 2002; Ball, Morris, Hartnett, and Blanck, 2005) and to the expansion of governmental benefit programs for people with disabilities. Even among the employed, there are a number of disparities faced by employees with disabilities, including lower average pay and job security, and reduced access to health insurance, pension plans, and training (Hale, Hayghe, and McNeil, 1998; Kruse, 1998; Yelin and Trupin, 2003; Schur, 2002; Baldwin and Schumacher, 2002; Baldwin and Johnson, 2006; RRTC, 2007; Schur et al., 2008). They are also less likely than non-disabled workers to be in jobs that are classified as "economically and psychologically rewarding" (Yelin and Trupin, 2003: 28). These employment-related disparities limit the ability of many people with disabilities to fully participate in society, since employment has not only economic value, but also social and psychological value, in integrating people into mainstream society (National Council on Disability, 2007). The majority of non-employed working-age people with disabilities say that they would prefer to be employed. In the 2006 General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 59% of non-employed people with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 say that they would like to have a job either now or in the future (calculations by authors). This is consistent with earlier figures reported in National Organization on Disability/Harris (2000). There are also benefits to employers, government, and society as a whole in increasing employment of people with disabilities, and decreasing barriers that keep them underemployed in jobs that do not fully use their abilities. For employers, the large number of non-employed people with disabilities represent a valuable pool of human resources to help meet projected labor shortages as baby boomers retire. Government will benefit from increased employment of people with disabilities as tax receipts increase and social expenditures decline. In addition, “as recognized in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are societal benefits from greater inclusion in mainstream society as the barriers facing people with disabilities are dismantled” (National Council on Disability, 2007: 14). One possible explanation for the persistent employment gap between working-age people with and without disabilities is the job-mismatch hypothesis: occupational job demands make employment either impossible or much less productive for people with disabilities, narrowing the range of jobs to which their abilities and interests may be matched. For example, people in wheelchairs may be restricted from a wide range of manufacturing and service jobs that require good mobility, and many of them may not have the educational background for white-collar jobs. Such a mismatch is of particular concern if it occurs in the growth occupations, making it harder for people with disabilities to find job opportunities. If, however, a wide range of people with disabilities can meet the job demands in growth occupations, this information can be used to focus research, education, and policy efforts on overcoming other barriers. Therefore a key determinant of the employment opportunities for people with disabilities is the evolving structure of jobs in the U.S. economy, include the changing occupational mix as well as the ability requirements within each occupation. It is well-recognized that employed people with disabilities are disproportionately likely to be in relatively low-paying blue-collar and service jobs (Hale, Hayghe, and McNeil, 1998; Yelin and Trupin, 2003), but there has been no attempt to analyze projected employment of people with disabilities based on their current occupational mix, or to analyze their potential for increased employment based on the projected ability requirements of occupations. Method Every two years the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) develops 10-year projections for occupations. The most recent projections are for the 2008-2018 period (Lacey and Wright, 2009). The first part of this study provides baseline estimates of how the employment of people with disabilities will change if their prevalence in each occupation remains the same. We do this by matching the BLS projections for each occupation to data on the occupational distribution of employed people with disabilities from the 2008 American Community Survey (ACS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS uses six questions to identify people with disabilities, of which four of the questions permit broad measures of vision, hearing, mobility, and mental/cognitive impairments. The six questions are: 1. Is this person deaf or does he/she have serious difficulty hearing? 2. Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses? 3. Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions? 4. Does this person have serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs? 5. Does this person have difficulty dressing or bathing? 6. Because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition, does this person have difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping? In this paper a positive answer to any question indicates a disability, a positive answer to question 1 indicates a hearing impairment, a positive answer to question 2 indicates a vision impairment, a positive answer to question 3 indicates a mental/cognitive impairment, and a positive answer to question 4 indicates a mobility impairment. There are 1,434,979 employed people in the 2008 ACS sample, of whom 87,038 are identified by one of these six questions as having disabilities. The prevalence of people with disabilities was estimated within each occupation, and these figures were matched to the projections for that occupation, forming the basis of the information presented in Tables 1 to 6a. Of the 469 occupations in the ACS, 13 occupations had sample sizes of less than 100. Those occupations are identified with asterisks when they appear in the tables. The matching was straightforward for most occupations since both datasets use the NAICS coding scheme. In some cases the ACS combined several occupations and reported data at a higher level of aggregation than available in the BLS occupational projections; in these cases the occupational projections were likewise aggregated to produce a direct match. This resulted in 469 matched occupations, exhaustively covering all civilian occupations represented in the BLS projections (though with a number of occupations reported at a higher level of aggregation than in the BLS projections). The second part of this study allows for changes in the occupational distribution, looking at the potential for increased employment of people with disabilities based on ability requirements of occupations. The method is to match the BLS occupational projections to ability information from the O*Net 14.0 database in order to project changes in employer demand for different abilities. For each occupation, the O*Net database provides information on the level and importance of 52 specific abilities for each occupation, based on ratings by analysts and job holders. The 52 abilities are listed and briefly described in the appendix. O*Net also uses the NAICS occupational coding scheme so the occupational match was straightforward in most cases; in cases where occupations were more highly aggregated in either database, the information in the other database was likewise aggregated to provide an appropriate match. This resulted in 755 matched occupations, again exhaustively covering all civilian occupations represented in the BLS projections (though with several occupations reported at a higher level of aggregation than in the BLS projections). For each of the 52 abilities, O*Net provides data on the importance and required level of the ability for each occupation. Importance is scaled as a 1-5 measure, with 1=not important and 5=extremely important, and level is scaled as a 1-7 measure, with 1 being a very low level and 7 the highest level. The anchors for the level measure are tailored to each ability; for example, the anchors for required arm-hand steadiness are 2=”light a candle,” 4=”thread a needle,” and 6=”cut facets in a diamond.” For this study the importance measure was divided into three categories: Less than 1.5=“No or low importance,” 1.5 to 2.5=”Some importance,” and 2.5 or more=”Important.” The level measure was put into two categories: Less than 2.5=”Low level,” and 2.5 or more=”High level.” These two recoded measures were combined to create five categories by which abilities are classified for each occupation: “No or low importance,” “Some importance, low level,” “Some importance, high level,” “Important, low level,” and “Important, high level.” Table 7 uses these categories in presenting breakdowns of occupational job growth. As will be discussed, these figures probably represent a lower bound on the number of jobs that can be done by people with disabilities, since at least some of the assessments of ability requirements did not appear to take into account the full range of accommodations that can enable people with specific impairments to do many jobs. Baseline projections What is the projected employment of people with disabilities in 2018 given their current occupational distribution? The first row of Table 1 shows the employment levels and projections for the overall workforce, replicating the summary figures presented in Lacey and Wright (2009). The second row, based on the matches between the BLS projections and ACS data, shows that given their current occupational distribution, the employment of people with disabilities is estimated to grow from 9,176,000 to 10,001,000, or an increase of 825,000 jobs. Their growth rate of 9.0% is lower than the overall growth rate of 10.1% for all workers, reflecting the fact that people with disabilities are not distributed proportionately across occupations, being underrepresented in faster-growing occupations and overrepresented in slower-growing occupations. If they were distributed proportionately across occupations so that their growth rate matched the 10.1% overall growth rate, there would be an additional 104,000 jobs for people with disabilities in 2018 (column 5). Growing and Declining Occupations How likely are people with disabilities to be in the fastest-growing occupations? Table 2 shows the top 20 occupations ranked by percentage growth over the 2008-2018 period. The fastest-growing occupations are slightly different than those presented in Lacey and Wright (2009) due to the different aggregation of some occupations in the ACS. For example, the third fastest-growing occupation presented by Lacey and Wright is home health aides (2009:91), but that occupation is combined in the ACS data with nursing and psychiatric aides who have a lower growth rate, so the combined occupation falls to rank number 15 in Table 2. Column 5 shows the prevalence of people with disabilities in each occupation. People with disabilities represent 6.1% of all employed people. They are overrepresented in the first and third fastest growing occupations, biomedical and agricultural engineers and personal and home care aides, where they represented 7.2% and 12.3% of workers respectively in 2008, but are underrepresented in the second fastest growing occupation where they were only 3.6% of network systems and data communications analysts. The substantial growth in personal and home care aides is driven in large part by the aging of the population and the increased number of people with disabling conditions who require help from aides, so it is striking that this also represents a growth in employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The growth is also due in part to increased availability of long-term care services in the home as an alternative to institutionalization, which Medicaid programs are increasingly likely to support. The median pay of this occupation is in the lowest quarter of occupations, as shown in column 11. Overall, people with disabilities are underrepresented in 17 of the top 20 fastest-growing occupations (the exceptions being biomedical and agricultural engineers; personal and home care aides; and nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides). A similar pattern prevails when looking separately at people with vision, hearing, mobility, and mental/cognitive impairments (columns 6 to 9). Just as people with disabilities are underrepresented in most of the fastest-growing occupations, they are overrepresented in the fastest-declining occupations. Table 3 shows that the fastest-declining occupation is “textile winding, twisting, and drawing out machine setters, operators, and tenders,” where workers with disabilities represent 7.9% of workers compared to the economy-wide average of 6.1% (column 5). They are overrepresented in 19 of the top 20 declining occupations (the exception being “meter readers, utilities”). Most of these are manufacturing jobs that require only short-term or moderate-term on-the-job training (column 12), so there has not been substantial training investment by workers and they may be able to move easily to other jobs. Growing and Declining Occupations for People with Disabilities What are the job growth rates in the occupations with highest disability prevalence? Table 4 takes a different approach than Tables 2 and 3, by ranking the occupations by disability prevalence instead of overall job growth rates. The highest disability prevalence is among “drilling and boring machine tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic” (24.7%, in column 5), an occupation that is projected to have an employment decline of 26.9% (column 4). While Tables 2 and 3 show that people with disabilities tend to be in slower-growing occupations overall, the top 20 occupations in disability prevalence are evenly split between growing and declining occupations, with 10 of each (Table 4, column 4). Most of these are low-paying occupations (column 8). Table 4a breaks out the top 10 occupations in prevalence for people with vision, hearing, mobility, and mental/cognitive impairments. The highest prevalence of people with vision impairments (9.7%) and mobility impairments (9.8%) is among “shoe and leather workers and repairers,” which is predicted to decline by 14.3% by 2018 (column 4). The highest prevalence of people with hearing impairments (19.2%) is among “drilling and boring tool setters, operators, and tenders, metal and plastic,” an occupation that is projected to decline by 26.9% by 2018. Finally, the highest prevalence of people with mental/cognitive impairments is among cutting workers, an occupation that is predicted to decline by 6.9% by 2018. Where will the greatest number of jobs for people with disabilities come from? Table 5 presents the top 20 occupations after ranking by the absolute growth in number of jobs held by people with disabilities (maintaining the assumption that disability prevalence stays constant in each occupation). The top occupation is nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides which is predicted to create 63,900 jobs for people with disabilities (column 6), followed by the closely-related occupation of personal and home care aides which is predicted to create 46,100 jobs for people with disabilities. Most of these top 20 occupations for job growth of people with disabilities are low-paying (column 8), except for five high-paying occupations: 23,300 more jobs as secretaries and administrative assistants, 21,700 more jobs as registered nurses, 12,300 more jobs as bookkeeping, accounting, and audit clerks, 12,200 more jobs as other teachers and instructors, and 11,800 more jobs as elementary and middle school teachers (column 6). When broken down by type of major impairment in Table 5a, the greatest increase in jobs within each of the impairment categories is projected to be among nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides (column 6). Where will the greatest number of jobs be lost for people with disabilities? Table 6 presents the bottom 20 occupations in job growth, all of them reflecting declining occupations. The most jobs lost by people with disabilities will be among farmers and ranchers (8,000, in column 6), followed by sewing machine operators (6,000). Most of these 20 occupations are low-paying, with the exception of farmers and ranchers (8,000 lost jobs),“postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators” (5,000 lost jobs), “paper goods machine setters, operators, and tenders” (3,000 lost jobs), “first line supervisors/managers of production and operating workers” (2,000 lost jobs), and “information and record clerks, all other” (2,000 lost jobs). When broken down by type of major impairment in Table 6a, the greatest losses in jobs for people with vision and mobility impairments are among sewing machine operators (2,000 and 2,800 lost jobs, respectively), while the greatest loss in jobs for people with hearing impairments is among farmers and ranchers (4,400 lost jobs), and the greatest loss in jobs for people with mental/cognitive impairments is among “packers and packagers, hand” (2,100 lost jobs). Projecting Potential Demand by Ability Requirements While the last section assumed that the prevalence of people stays constant within each occupation, this section allows for that prevalence to change. Here we focus on the potential of people with disabilities to fill new jobs, based on the ability requirements of growing occupations. Table 7 breaks down job growth by the level and importance of 52 specific abilities. (See the methods section for a description of how level and importance were categorized, and the appendix for description of the abilities.) For example, there is projected to be a decline of 5,500 jobs for which oral comprehension of instructions has only some importance at a low level (column 2), with very high growth (15,216,700 jobs) in occupations where a high level of oral comprehension is important (column 5). Two of the categories provide job growth where the specific ability has only some importance (columns 2 and 3), indicating that the ability may not be essential for doing the job, so it is possible that the job could be restructured or other accommodations could be made so that the ability is not required. As seen in Table 7, for most of the cognitive abilities, most job growth is occurring in occupations in which at least a low level of the specific cognitive ability is important (columns 4 and 5). For several cognitive abilities, however, there will be substantial job growth in occupations where only a low level of the ability is used, and the ability has only some importance for the job so it may not be crucial (column 2). In particular, for each of the specific quantitative, memory, perceptual, and spatial abilities (except flexibility of closure), there will be growth of 5 million or more jobs in occupations where the specific ability has no or low importance, or only some importance is attached to a low level of the ability. The psychomotor and physical abilities are not very important for many of the growing occupations, which is promising news for people with mobility impairments. The bulk of the job growth for each of the specific psychomotor and physical abilities occurs in occupations where the ability has no or low importance (column 1), or a low level of the ability has only some importance (column 2). For example, manual dexterity has low or no importance in 3,348,000 of the new jobs, and only a low level has some importance in 5,015,000 of the new jobs, which is promising for many people with quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, or other conditions that limit manual dexterity. As another example, gross body coordination has low or no importance in 5,612,000 of the new jobs, and only a low level of gross body coordination has some importance in 5,199,000 of the new jobs. This is promising for people using wheelchairs or crutches who generally lack the ability to easily coordinate all of their limbs. Table 7 also shows that many of the specific visual abilities are not important for the bulk of new jobs. For example, night vision and peripheral vision have low or no importance in most new jobs. The one major exception is near vision, which is rated as having some importance in all occupations, and a high level is rated as important for almost all occupations. People with significant visual impairments are, however, employed in a wide array of occupations, so the assessments in this case did not take account of available accommodations. In the 2008 ACS, the occupational distribution of those who report a vision problem is: 10.0% in management, 13.7% in professional/technical, 13.7% in other white collar, 23.5% in services, 10.9% in sales, and 28.3% in blue-collar jobs. Similarly, there is a wide distribution of occupations among respondents in the SIPP and General Social Survey data who report that they are unable to see, which goes against the O*Net assessments that a high level of near vision is important in almost all occupations. Given the lack of consideration of accommodations with regard to visual impairments, it is very possible that the assessments in other occupations did not take account of the full range of accommodations that are available to minimize or eliminate the need for particular abilities, so while the ratings can provide a lower bound of the jobs that may be available, the potential for jobs with appropriate accommodations may be much higher. What specific occupations will provide the most jobs for those who have specific disabilities? Table 8 provides, for each of the 52 abilities, the top three occupations in total job growth where the ability has no or low importance. For example, for those with limited manual dexterity, the top three occupations in which this ability is not important are accountants and auditors (279,400 new jobs), post secondary teachers (256,900 new jobs), and elementary school teachers except special education (244,200 new jobs)(column 4). For those in wheelchairs who lack gross body coordination, the top three growing occupations in which this ability is not important are customer service representatives (399,500 new jobs), general office clerks (358,700 new jobs), and accountants and auditors (279,400 new jobs). Column 5 provides the total job openings due to growth and net replacements for each occupation. These data can provide a useful guide for people with disabilities, their families, educators, and vocational counselors in determining the best job opportunities. Quality and Fit of Jobs for People with Disabilities Pay and education/training levels What do the occupational trends imply for the quality of jobs and their fit for many people with disabilities? As noted above, Tables 4 and 5 show that the occupations with the highest prevalence of people with disabilities, and their greatest job growth based on the current occupational distribution, are mostly low-paying occupations. Table 9 breaks down occupational job growth by level of pay, and by major source of education and training, both for all workers and for workers with disabilities. Consistent with prior evidence on their lower earnings in general, people with disabilities in 2008 are disproportionately more likely to be in the lowest-paying occupations (26.7% compared to 20.7% overall, in columns 3-4) and less likely to be in the highest-paying occupations (13.8% compared to 21.4% overall). Their job growth is likewise disproportionately in the lowest-paying occupations (39.5% compared to 21.5% overall, in columns 7-8). While most of the job growth for workers with disabilities will be in occupations with low or very low pay, an encouraging finding is that the share of their growth in the highest-paying occupations (28.3%) exceeds the share of their current jobs in the highest-paying occupations (13.8%), so the proportion of workers with disabilities in high-paying jobs is predicted to increase by 2018. Table 9 also presents a breakdown of job growth by the level of education and training required for an occupation. Close to one-third of current jobs are in occupations where short-term on-the-job training is the major source of education and training (32.5%, in column 3), and 22.2% of the job growth is projected to be in these occupations (column 7). These figures are higher for people with disabilities, among whom 40.2% are in jobs requiring short-term on-the-job training (column 4), and 30.9% of their projected job growth is in such jobs (column 8). The next largest category of job growth for people with disabilities is in occupations requiring moderate-term on-the-job training (18.6% of job growth) followed by occupations requiring a Bachelor’s degree (15.8% of job growth). While only 16.4% of employed people with disabilities are in jobs requiring some type of college degree (column 4, last row), 27.7% of their job growth is projected to be in these occupations (column 8, last row). How do these educational requirements for occupations match up with the educational qualifications of currently non-employed people with disabilities? Can people with disabilities fill many of these jobs? Table 9a compares the projected job growth by educational requirements with the education levels of working-age non-employed people with disabilities from the 2008 ACS. A key finding from Table 9a is that non-employed people with disabilities could potentially fill a large number of the projected new jobs for the economy as a whole. For example, the number of non-employed people with disabilities who have Associate’s degrees (622,000, in column 3) would fill 63% of the projected 980,000 total new jobs in occupations requiring Associate’s degrees (column 1), and the number of non-employed people with disabilities who have Bachelor’s degrees (671,000) would fill over one-sixth of the projected 3,777,000 new jobs in occupations requiring Bachelor’s degrees. This is not to suggest that the non-employed people with disabilities could easily fill all of those jobs, since of course the type of education they have may not be the type that is required, and other qualifications will matter for many of the new jobs. It does indicate, however, there is a large number of well-educated non-employed people with disabilities who can help fill projected job growth and alleviate labor shortages. This appears feasible since, as noted earlier, the majority of working-age non-employed people with disabilities say that they would like to be employed. This pool of educated people with disabilities also appears to be growing, as indicated by the results of Jolls (2004) who found that “individuals with disabilities who were not employed in the years following legal innovation in the form of the ADA were more likely than their pre-ADA counterparts to give educational participation as their reason for not being employed.” While there will be substantial growth in jobs that do not require college degrees (Table 9), higher education clearly increases employment opportunities. Education in fact appears to have a bigger effect on employment probabilities for people with disabilities than for non-disabled people. Using the 2008 ACS we estimate that having a Bachelor’s degree, relative to having a high school degree, raises the employment rate by 18 percentage points among people with disabilities, compared to 9 percentage points among people without disabilities. While education appears to help close the employment gap, even people with disabilities who have college or advanced degrees have lower employment rates than their non-disabled counterparts, indicating that they continue to face other barriers. Where will high-paying jobs come from for people with disabilities? Table 10 focuses on occupations with high or very high pay, considered separately for occupations that do and do not require a college degree. The table presents the top 10 occupations in each category, ranked by the size of the projected job growth for people with disabilities. For people with disabilities who do not have college degrees, the high-paying occupation with the greatest job growth is secretaries and administrative assistants (23,000 new jobs, in column 6), followed by bookkeeping, accounting, and audit clerks (12,000 new jobs) and maintenance and repair workers (10,000 new jobs). For people with disabilities who have college degrees, the high-paying occupation with the greatest job growth is registered nurses (22,000 new jobs), followed by other teachers and instructors (12,000 new jobs) and elementary and middle school teachers (12,000 new jobs). Part-time and home-based jobs People with disabilities are especially likely to be in part-time and home-based work arrangements, in part because these jobs provide flexibility that some people with disabilities need in order to deal with transportation difficulties and medical concerns (Schur, 2003; Schur and Kruse 2002; National Council on Disability, 2007: 105-118). Table 11 provides projections of the growth in part-time and home-based work, using 2008 data on these arrangements by occupation matched to the BLS occupational projections. The figures for part-time workers by occupation were calculated from the 2008 ACS based on those who usually work less than 35 hours/week. The percent of home-based workers by occupation was also calculated from the 2008 ACS, where respondents were asked “How did this person usually get to work last week?” and the answer was “Worked at home.” This is clearly a restrictive measure of home-based work, not counting the workers who do some but not all of their work at home. Growing occupations are somewhat more likely to have high levels of these arrangements, as shown by the finding that the projected 10.6% growth in part-time jobs and 10.7% growth in home-based jobs are greater than the 10.1% growth in all jobs. Overall there will be 3,595,000 new part-time jobs and 632,000 new home-based jobs (assuming the proportion of these jobs stays constant within each occupation). It should be noted that the measure of home-based work is conservative, covering those who said they work at home in response to a question on commuting, and excludes jobs where some but not all of the work may be done at home. The overall percent of workers responding “Work at home” to the ACS commuting question was 4.1%, which is less than the 14.9% reporting any home-based work in 2004, among whom about half (47%) were doing paid work at home (BLS, 2005: 2). What occupations are most amenable to part-time and home-based work, and may therefore be attractive to some people with disabilities? Table 11a provides the top 10 occupations in prevalence of each type of job. The highest rate of part-time work is among ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers (82.8%, in column 7), followed by hosts and hostesses (82.0%), counter attendants (75.5%), and models, demonstrators, and product promoters (73.2%). The highest rate of home-based work is in the declining occupation of farmers and ranchers (40.7%, in column 8), but that is followed by the growing occupations of writers and authors (38.3%), artists and related workers (30.3%), child care workers (26.8%), and residential advisors (25.6%). Computer-using jobs Finally, what will be the growth in computer-using jobs? Computer technologies may be especially valuable for people with disabilities, both because computer use can raise the productivity and pay of people who can face limited job opportunities (e.g., allowing people in wheelchairs to be just as productive as other workers), and because special technologies can help compensate for the limitations of many disabilities (e.g., screen readers for people with visual impairments). Prior research has found that computer skills help speed the return to work after disability onset, and computer use at work closes the earnings gap between people with and without disabilities (Krueger and Kruse, 1995). Returning to Table 11, in 2008 there were 83.9 million jobs, or more than half of all jobs, in occupations where O*Net analysts rated a high level of computer use as important (column 1). The projected growth rate in these occupations is 11.4% (column 4). There is actually a high growth rate of jobs where computer use has low or no importance (11.2%, in column 4), but this is building on a very low number, so only 8.0% of new jobs will be in occupations where computer use has low or no importance (column 5). (Almost one-third of the growth in these jobs will be among personal and home care aides.) Over half (62.7%) of new job growth will be in occupations where a high level of computer use is very important. This represents an important opportunity for people with disabilities given the special benefits that computer use can provide to them. While prior research indicates that people with disabilities are less likely to receive computer training (Kruse, Krueger, and Drastal, 1996), Survey of Income and Program Participation data show that 45% of non-employed people with disabilities in 1999 were either regular computer users or said they could use computers without difficulty (Schur and Kruse, 2002). It is likely this percentage has grown since 1999, as computer use has expanded generally. Therefore many people with disabilities may be able to take advantage of the projected growth in computer-using jobs. Conclusion These data provide a portrait of the projected job growth of people with disabilities given their current occupational distribution, and the potential for greater job growth given the ability requirements of growing occupations. One bit of bad news for people with disabilities is that they currently tend to be underrepresented in growing occupations and overrepresented in declining occupations, so that their projected job growth of 9.0% is lower than the overall job growth of 10.1% if the percent of workers with a disability stays constant in each occupation. If these projections hold true, the employment rate among people with disabilities is unlikely to increase, and may decline given the growing percent of people with disabilities as the population ages. We estimate that the population of people with disabilities age 16 or older will increase by 5.8 million, or 16.6%, and the population of people with disabilities of working age (16 to 64) will increase by 1.8 million, or 8.9% (from applying the prevalence of disability by sex and age category in the 2008 ACS to the projected population distribution by sex and age in 2018)(Toossi, 2009: 35). As shown in Table 1, our baseline projection is that the number of jobs for people with disabilities will increase by 825,000 million jobs, or 9.0%. If the number of people with disabilities age 16 or older increases by 16.6%, the employment rate among all people with disabilities age 16 or older would clearly decline, but it is not obvious how the employment rate for working-age people with disabilities would be affected since it is not known how many of these new jobs would be held by people of working age. If the age distribution among all workers with disabilities stays constant, then the employment rate of working-age people with disabilities will stay constant. The BLS projects, however, that the workforce will be aging by 2018, with greater shares of workers in the 55-64 and 65+ age categories (Toossi, 2009: 44). To the extent that the job growth among people with disabilities is concentrated among those who are age 65 or older, the employment rate for working-age people with disabilities will decrease, but this is at least partly counterbalanced by the increased share of workers age 55-64, who have a higher disability rate than younger workers and will help increase the employment rate for working-age people with disabilities (implying that the disability rate may not stay constant within occupations, as assumed in this analysis). A second bit of bad news is that the greatest job growth for people with disabilities is likely to be in low-paying occupations, largely reflecting their current overrepresentation in low-paying occupations. There are, however, several promising indicators of potential for significant job growth among people with disabilities. An analysis of the importance of 52 abilities in each occupation shows that there will be substantial job growth in occupations where several of the cognitive abilities—quantitative abilities, memory, perceptual abilities, and spatial abilities—either have low importance or only some importance for a low level of the ability. In addition, there will be substantial growth in occupations where many of the psychomotor and physical abilities have low or no importance, representing good opportunities for people with mobility impairments. It should be noted that these estimates probably reflect lower bounds on the number of jobs that can be done by people with disabilities, since many accommodations can open up further opportunities for people with specific impairments. Detailed study of how specific accommodations can help people with impairments in different occupations would be valuable and enable better estimates of the potential for job growth. It is also promising that the growth rate of part-time and home-based jobs is projected to be strong, slightly exceeding the overall job growth rate. These types of jobs can be especially appropriate for some people with disabilities—providing flexibility to deal with transportation and medical concerns—although they can also have disadvantages such as lower average pay levels. Finally, most of the new jobs will be in occupations where computer skills are important, which also represents good opportunities for people with disabilities given that computer skills can help overcome and even erase some of the disadvantages associated with many disabilities. Employment of people with disabilities should be helped by projected labor shortages as employers increasingly use a variety of efforts to tap underutilized sources of workers, including diversity initiatives and best practices in recruitment, employee development, and work-life balance (National Council on Disability, 2007: 73-118). As people with disabilities are increasingly included in a variety of jobs, this should help to break down attitudinal barriers and company practices that often limit opportunities for people with disabilities (Colella, 1996; Stone and Colella, 1996; Schur et al., 2005). Overall, the occupational data indicate that people with disabilities face some important hurdles, but there is good potential to increase their employment levels and help employers meet projected labor shortages in the next decade. Endnotes  Bibliography Baldwin, Marjorie L., and Johnson, William. 2006. "A Critical Review of Studies of Discrimination against Workers with Disabilities." in M. Rodgers III, ed., Handbook on the economics of discrimination. Northampton, MA: Edgar Elgar Publishing. Baldwin, Marjorie, and Schumacher, Edward J. 2002. "A Note on Job Mobility Among Workers with Disabilities," Industrial Relations, 41(3), July, 430-441. Ball, P., Morris, Hartnett, J., and Blanck, Peter. 2005. "Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Asset Accumulation by People with Disabilities," Disability Studies Quarterly, Part 2; 25(4), available at http://www.dsq-sds.org/_articles_html/2005/fall/. 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