Recession deals a double blow to those both disabled and unemployed

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By Donna St. George Washington Post Staff Writer

If he had his wish, Alex Maltby would be working with autistic children as a classroom aide, the best job he ever had. Instead, he is at his mother's kitchen table in Silver Spring pondering job possibilities -- 33 years old and visually impaired, looking for a way to make a living. The search has gone on and on.


It is a brutal job market for many workers, but even more so for those with disabilities, who can struggle in the best of times. For them, the unemployment rate is now 14.4 percent -- 50 percent higher than it is for other workers, and the jobs gap is larger still because so many are not counted as being in the workforce.

"The job situations for many people with disabilities are more precarious and less stable," says John Butterworth, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
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