Disabled Unemployment Jumps to 14.3%

Disabled Unemployment Jumps to 14.3%

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate for Americans with disabilities jumped to 14.3% in February. This is a 16% increase over last year, when the unemployment rate for the disabled was just 12.3%.

This spike in the disabled unemployment rate came in spite of the fact that the number of disabled Americans in the labor force declined since last year. This decline in labor force participation was offset by almost half a million fewer disabled Americans with jobs. The number of disabled out of work also jumped by 60 thousand since last February. 

For the first two months of 2014, the average number of disabled Americans with a job is the lowest in at least 5 years. The number of disabled Americans who have left the labor force is also the highest in at least 5 years. At the start of the economic “recovery” in 2009, almost 600,000 more disabled workers had jobs than today. 

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