Disability less of a barrier in a tight labor market
More companies are recruiting stay-at-home parents, retirees, veterans and people with disabilities to expand the pool of potential workers
WROUND ROCK, Texas hen Kate Cosway completed her master’s degree in 2014, her résumé drew plenty of interest, but she rarely advanced far in the hiring process. She was pretty sure she knew why: She is on the autism spectrum and struggles in traditional interviews.
Her luck finally turned this summer when she landed a 12-week internship at Dell Technologies, which this month will turn into a full-time job working on automation in the company’s audit department.
A year ago, Cosway probably would not have been hired at Dell, either. But last year, the Texas company started a program aimed at hiring people with autism.
For Dell, the effort is partly a response to a growing challenge: With the unemployment rate under 3 percent in the company’s Austin area — and with talent in technical roles especially scarce — Dell needs to tap into new pools of potential workers. It is also trying to hire more veterans and people looking to reenter the work force, often after raising children.
“This is really one of our business imperatives, because we know that there is a talent crisis,” said Nitcelle B. Emanuels, director of diversity and inclusion at Dell. “We need to get more creative.”
With the national unemployment rate now flirting with a 50-year low, companies are increasingly looking outside the traditional labor force for workers. They are offering flexible hours and work-from-home options to attract stay-at-home parents, full-time students and recent retirees. They are making new accommodations to open up jobs to people with disabilities. They are dropping educational requirements, waiving criminal background checks and offering training to prospective workers who lack necessary skills.
Those policies are having an effect. In recent months, nearly three-quarters of people who have become newly employed have come from outside the labor force — meaning they had not even been looking for jobs. The share of adults who are working is now the highest in more than a decade, after adjustments are made for the aging population.
Policymakers are taking notice. Jerome
Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, opened a closely watched speech in Jackson, Wyo., last month with a discussion of how the “historically strong job market” is reaching people who missed out on earlier stages of the recovery.
“We increasingly hear reports that employers are training workers who lack required skills, adapting jobs to the needs of employees with family responsibilities, and offering second chances to people who need one,” Powell said.
Now that progress could be in jeopardy. Evidence is growing that trade tensions and slowing global growth are taking a toll on the U.S. economy. This week, data showed that the manufacturing sector was contracting. The job market has escaped significant damage so far, but it is unclear how long that can last.
Dell’s executives say that their recruitment efforts are part of a long-term strategy to diversify its workforce, and that the company will not abandon them just because the unemployment rate ticks back up.
Economists, however, said they doubt most companies will keep such programs in place when the next recession hits. Similar policies adopted during the late 1990s and early 2000s largely disappeared after the dot-com bubble burst, and did not make a comeback.
That, many economists say, is why it is so important to keep the current expansion — already the longest on record — going for as long as possible. Companies are raising pay, but only gradually, and the inflow of workers into the labor force has slowed in recent months.
For workers hired during the good times, the benefits can be enduring. Economic research has found that once people are drawn into the labor force, they tend to stay in it. That may be especially true for workers with disabilities or other barriers to employment who thrive once given a job — but who struggle to get that chance in all but the strongest job markets.
Corporate leaders have spoken for years about the need to tap into new pools of talent. But they are increasingly backing up those words with action, recruiting candidates from outside the labor force and adapting corporate policies and job requirements to accommodate their needs.
A rising share of companies are advertising that their jobs are open to people with no experience.