Disabled workers prove their value in tight labor market
Julie Propp landed her first job about 18 months ago — at 55.
A part-time retail helper at a Kwik Trip convenience store in Marshalltown, Iowa, Propp cleans and ensures coffee cups and other items are well-stocked. She previously loaded boxes in workshops run by agencies that help disabled people but never had a traditional job because of a developmental disability.
She prefers her current gig. “It’s more money down there and more hours,” says Propp, who earns $10.90 an hour and will soon get a bump to $11.25. “Some customers are so nice.”
With the low 4.1 percent unemployment rate making it tougher for employers to hire and retain workers, more are bringing on Americans with disabilities who had long struggled to find jobs. Many firms are modifying traditional interviews that filter out candidates with less-refined social skills and transferring some job duties to other staffers to accommodate the strengths of people with disabilities.
“In a tight labor market, employers who usually might not hire some of these people are reaching (deeper) in the queue,” says Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University.
Kwik Trip launched its program to place people with disabilities in retail helper jobs in 2013. About half of the company’s 634 stores in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin have such workers. Turnover for retail helpers was just 9 percent last year compared to 45 percent for all part-time employees, says Joalyn Torgerson, Kwik Trip’s return-to-work coordinator.
“There’s a growing cadre of companies that look at people with disabilities as an untapped talent pool,” says Carol Glazer, CEO of the National Organization on Disability. “When people spend their entire lives solving problems in a world that wasn’t built for them, that’s an attribute that can be translated into high productivity in the workforce.”
The return of many disabled workers to the labor force has helped shrink the Social Security disability rolls, which swelled during and after the recession as many people with less severe infirmities applied for benefits after their unemployment insurance expired. The past three years, the number of people on disability has steadily fallen to 8.7 million from 9 million and the ranks of those leaving has exceeded those joining, notes Moody’s economist Adam Ozimek.
With millions of employees job hopping for higher wages, companies such as CVS, Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers find people with disabilities are often reliable and loyal. And those with conditions such as autism can be more detail-oriented. Microsoft has hired 50 people with autism the past three years, mostly as software engineers.
Several years ago, CVS opened “mock pharmacies” brimming with products, prescriptions and signage to train disabled job candidates. In nine weeks, students learn how to run the cash register, place products on shelves, complete paperwork and deal with customers.
Kaylee Merrick, 24, who lives in Stafford, Va., and graduated high school in 2014, got her first job through the program nearly two years ago. She has anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, memory loss, attention-deficit disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. In previous job interviews, “I was like — Oh, no, what if they don’t hire me? I start fidgeting really bad. I have tics.” With CVS, she says, “they teach you.”
Merrick, who works up to 30 hours a week, rings up purchases, stocks shelves, cleans and helps customers. “I’m basically running around all day,” she says. “I love dealing with people, even the grumpy ones . ... And when I clean something, it’s clean.”
The number of disabled people in white-collar jobs is also growing. Microsoft long has hired people with autism for software developer and data scientist positions as part of its normal recruitment. But the company realized many qualified candidates were screened out during phone interviews, said Neil Barnett, Microsoft’s director of inclusive hiring. Skilled computer programmers are coveted, with Microsoft struggling to fill hundreds of openings.
So the software giant overhauled its selection process for autistic candidates, stretching a typical one-day interview and testing regimen to 4½ days.
“We’re finding tremendous talent,” Barnett says. “We feel we have the types of roles that would be a good fit.”