John Fetterman, the Democratic Pennsylvania senator, returned to work yesterday after a brief hospitalization last Wednesday to assess a bout of lightheadedness. Fetterman, who experienced a severe stroke last May, won a contentious and competitive Senate race in November despite a challenging recovery and ramped-up attacks from Republican lawmakers questioning his fitness to serve.
He's now learning to govern as a newly disabled person and doing it in public, making him one of the most high-profile disabled professionals working today.
A recent New York Times piece describes many of the accommodations Fetterman uses during his work day, which include live audio-to-text transcription for committee meetings and a custom desk with a closed-captioning monitor he uses when presiding over the Senate. But the article also describes a community of colleagues who are learning, too. “We’re going to have to learn our own styles with it,” said Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D), referring to a talk-to-text tablet. “What I was saying was accurate even when I talked fast. I wanted to make sure it was accurate. It was kind of to imagine what it would be like to be him.”
For disabled talent, 2022 was a good year for getting a job and performing it effectively, often from the comfort of their homes.
That's according to a 2022 disability trends report from the Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire's Institute on Disability.
The report uses an employment-to-population ratio figure to express the percentage of workers with disabilities relative to the broader population. The average monthly employment-to-population ratio for working-age people with disabilities (16-64) increased from 31.3% in 2021 to 34.8% in 2022. The trend was similar for workforce participation rates: 35.1% in 2021 to 37.8% in 2022.
"Labor shortages across the country mean that there was a disproportionate demand for workers compared to the number of people willing to fill positions. Hiring managers may have needed to break outside of their comfort zones to consider different segments of workers," report coauthor John O'Neill, who runs the Center for Employment and Disability Research at the Kessler Foundation, said in a press release.
And they’ll stay put if adequately accommodated.
"The increase in work-from-home arrangements and greater flexibility in work hours seen during the height of the pandemic may have permanently opened new employment opportunities for people with disabilities," said fellow coauthor Andrew Houtenville, a professor of economics and research director, in a statement accompanying the report.
But as employers increasingly insist that employees return to the office, these gains hang in the balance.
As I covered last fall, this matter is also a civil rights issue.
Race plays an enormous factor whenever a person experiences or lives with a disabling condition, amplified by existing health care disparities, biased assumptions, and the complicated lives of wage workers, who are more likely to be or become disabled. Black and Asian people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed than their white or Latinx counterparts, and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty. As a result, accommodation strategies must consider the entire scope of a person's identity and context.
So, the pressure is now on employers to maintain the possibilities that a work-from-anywhere world presented to all employees with disabilities. (This should include employees who care for people with disabilities, too.) The U.S. Congress, which can agree on nearly nothing, has been an unexpectedly bright—well, to be fairer, a less dim—light on this issue.
But if employers are not tapping disability expertise in their hiring, recruiting, and return-to-work plans, then the positive trend is likely to reverse quickly.
O’Neill sounds optimistic.
"Today, more companies are partnering with disability organizations in their recruitment efforts," he says. "And more are using outside assistance for onboarding workers with disabilities. We also see more employers adopting training on disability issues and cultural competence…and reaching out to government and local resources regarding the provision of accommodations."
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
This edition of raceAhead was edited by Ruth Umoh.
