About 5.6 million disabled people between the ages of 16 and 64 had jobs in August, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, the news outlet reported Oct. 3. The group’s workforce participation rate was 37.6 percent in August, up almost 5 percent since April 2020 and right around the record since the data started being tracked in 2008, the Kessler Foundation and Durham-based University of New Hampshire found.
“If you had asked me two years ago if I would ever return to work, I would’ve said no. It never entered my mind as a possibility until everyone was working remote,” Beka Andardi, a 41-year-old recruiter from Bellevue, Wash., who uses a wheelchair, told Bloomberg. “It’s a much more comfortable situation when you can interview over Zoom and people don’t see a wheelchair as the first thing about you.”
