Survey of Employer Perspectives on the Employment of People with Disabilities: Technical Report

In the first survey of its magnitude, 3,797 businesses representing 2.4 million companies, across 12 industry sectors and various company sizes, reported on their beliefs about and strategies for recruiting, hiring, retaining and advancing employees with disabilities. "The objective of this nationally representative survey was to inform the development and promotion of policy and practice by comparing employer perspectives across industries and within companies of varying sizes. ODEP will use the data from this survey to formulate targeted strategies and policies for increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities. This survey emphasized current attitudes and practices of employers in 12 industry sectors, including some high growth industries as projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics" (p. 1). (Abstractor: Author and Website Staff)

"Employing people with disabilities: - Among companies in the United States, 471,562 companies (19.1 percent) report employing people with disabilities. - Among small companies 10.7 percent report employing people with disabilities, while 22.6 percent of medium-sized companies and 53.1 percent of large companies report employing people with disabilities. - 326,721 companies (13.6 percent) report that they actively recruit people with disabilities. - Larger companies are more likely to actively recruit people with disabilities (33.8 percent) than smaller companies (7.8 percent). - Public administration organizations are more likely to actively recruit than their private sector counterparts. - Among private sector companies, those in service-producing industries are more likely to actively recruit than those in goods-producing industries. Persuading companies to recruit people with disabilities: - Companies that do not actively recruit [people with disabilities, said that having more] information about performance, productivity, and how hiring people with disabilities can benefit a company’s bottom line [would be] the most persuasive information, while information about cost would be the least persuasive. - Large companies are more likely to be persuaded by information that is supported by statistics or research” (p. 2-4). (Abstractor: Author and Website Staff)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2008
• Author(s): Individual author not identified
• Organizational Author(s): CESSI, a Division of Axiom
• Funding Source: U.S. Department of Labor
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Justin Venneri
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies