For those with disabilities, finding jobs can be especially difficult
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Chaz Kellem, who works in community affairs for the Pittsburgh Pirates, poses at PNC Park.
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Chaz Kellem beat the odds.
A graduate of City Charter High School, Downtown, Mr. Kellem went to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania where he studied sports administration, hoping to land a job with a major league team. Despite intense competition in his field, the 27-year-old is now working full time for the Pittsburgh Pirates as their manager of diversity initiatives.
"I'm very lucky and blessed," he said.
Mr. Kellem is more lucky than he knows. The odds are long that as a man with a disability -- he uses a manual wheelchair -- he could find a job at all.
Less than one in five people with disabilities (19.2 percent) are even in the labor force, according to a first-ever study of the labor force characteristics of people with disabilities by the Bureau of Labor Statistics released this month. For people without disabilities, the labor force participation rate is 64.5 percent.
And, while it is always extra challenging to get a job if someone has a disability, this recession has been particularly unkind. In 2009, when the annual unemployment rate for people without disabilities was 9 percent, the rate for people who have disabilities was 14.5 percent.
For people with disabilities, finding a job is hard and finding a full-time job is harder. The bureau found that a full third of the people with disabilities were working part time, while just a fifth of people who are not disabled work part time.
The bureau's findings didn't surprise anyone involved in the community of people with disabilities.
Part of the problem in achieving higher employment levels in the disabled community goes right to a problem that has plagued the entire nation: health insurance.
"They are stuck in this disability benefit world," said Andrew J. Imparato, the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities in Washington, D.C.
First Published September 19, 2010 12:00 am
