I've had a hard time putting the current unemployment data into context based on my own experiences – at OPEN MINDS, we've been on a hiring frenzy…and having trouble getting responses to our ads. Then, one Sunday morning a couple months ago I was watching Laura Tyson in an interview on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and I had a flash of revelation. Ms. Tyson, former Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration, said that "unemployment for those with college educations is now 4.5 percent." She went on to cite Bureau of Labor Statistics data that for those with less than a high school diploma, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 13.8 percent during July. For those with a high school diploma but no college, the rate was 10.1 percent.
After thinking about that data, I have a new take on the unemployment situation. We have a structural unemployment problem, which is how labor economists refer to a mismatch between the skills of the people who of are out of work and the skills needed for the jobs that are available. And what this really boils down to is an education problem. A fundamental part of the long-term solution to our high unemployment rates is to improve our education system at every level – not only improving the graduation rates from high school and college, but also increasing the academic rigor of those programs. While it is certainly a valid point that "not everyone should go to college," given this employment situation, we also need to think of improvements to non-college technical/vocational training programs. Those training programs need to be relevant in the current context of a global economy and focused on areas with growth-potential that can provide a continuous living wage.
Diving deeper into the nationwide unemployment statistics and the prominence of the education attainment-aspect of the numbers led me to wonder what the implications of this situation would be for individuals with cognitive and mental disabilities. While assistive technologies are increasingly available to facilitate completion of advanced degrees by individuals with physical disabilities, disabilities that interfere with the thought processes are more punitive. In an economic environment where advanced degrees and related skill sets directly correlate to economic well being, the challenge of independently maintaining economic viability is becoming more and more insurmountable for these individuals.
I thought the best summary of the situation was in an article by Steven Pearlstein, The Bleak Truth About Unemployment. Mr. Pearlstein notes: "Somewhere between the rantings of the Republican right, which is peddling the nonsense that excessive government spending is to blame for high unemployment, and the Democratic left, which clings to the false hope that another helping of fiscal stimulus is all that is needed to get millions of Americans permanently back to work, is this stubborn reality: The loss of 8 million jobs reflects problems that are largely structural, not cyclical, which means they won't be brought back by fiddling with a magic dial in Washington that controls how much the government spends."
As Americans are pushed to develop a better-trained and more highly-educated workforce, the employment space for individuals with cognitive and mental disabilities will get smaller and smaller – leaving a population that will struggle to find a viable place in the fast-paced global market economy that we are heading towards.
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