The Dynamics of Disability Measuring and Monitoring Disability for Social Security Programs (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Persons with Disabilities and Demands of the Contemporary Labor Market
Persons with Disabilities and Demands of the Contemporary Labor Market
Pages 303-334
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From page 303... ...
programs, reflect an economy dominated by goods production, physical labor, hierarchical organization, and long job tenures (Yelin, 1992~; a population thought to be at risk for work loss primarily because of the chronic diseases of aging (Chirikos, 1993; Stapleton, et al., 1994~; and Me view that most such conditions would lead, inexorably, to functional decline without Me prospect for unprovement. This paper describes some of the changes in the labor market Mat have occurred over Me last several decades, shows Me extent to which the iEdward Yelin is a Professor of Medicine and Health Policy and Director of the Arthritis Research Group at the University of California at San Francisco.
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Dynamics in Labor Force Participation The 1950s and 1960s are viewed by some as the halcyon era in the U.S. economy, with high growth rates sustaining unprecedented increases in li
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Among women age 25 to 34, labor force participation rates more than doubled, from 36.0 percent in 1960 to 76.4 percent in 1999. Thus, the overall increase in labor force participation rates represents the net effect of a decline among men, particularly older men, and an increase among women, particularly younger women.
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Department of Labor, 1999a. Race Race plays a part in labor market dynamics and would appear to interact with gender.2 Over the last 27 years, labor force participation rates increased among all working-age whites by 14.8 percent, but the increase among all working-age African Americans was only 9.9 percent (Table 2~.
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1h each case, these percentages had risen over time as the labor market accommodated the substantial increases in labor force participation rates among women. The increase in Me labor force participation rates were all the more remarkTABLE 3 Age Structure (percent)
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As a result of the increased number of persons who are 55 to 64, a higher proportion of the workingage population will be at risk for onset of the chronic diseases of aging, putting increased pressure on disability compensation programs. On the other hand, among persons age 55 to 64, labor force participation rates have increased over the last decade, suggesting that a strong labor market affects the propensity of persons in this group to leave the labor force.
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Although the labor force participation rate for high school graduates has increased by 11.3 percent overall since 1970, it has been relatively stable since 1990. If the labor market continues to tighten in the next few years, labor force oarticiDation rates among high school graduates may begin to fall.
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measure some of the shifts in working conditions job tenure, frequency of part-time and temporary employment, alternative work arrangements, and rates of job displacement. They do not capture changes in the nature of workplace hierarchies and in the mix of work tasks for each job.
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. Primarily because of growth occurring prior to 1980, the share of total employment accounted for by the public administration sector increased by 1.9 percent; since 1980, however, its share has declined by 12.8 percent.
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Thus, Me share of employment in professional specialty and managerial occupations; techniTABLE 7 Number of Employees and Shares of Nonagricultural Employment in Various Service Industries, United States, 1970-1999 Year Percent Change, Service Industry 1970 1980 1990 1996 1999 1970-1999 Number (millions) Business and repair 1.4 3.9 7.5 8.1 9.0 542.9 Personal 4.3 3.8 4.7 4.4 4.5 4.7 Entertainment and recreation 0.7 1.1 1.5 2.4 2.6 271.4 Professional 12.9 19.9 25.4 30.1 32.4 151.2 Percent in Nonagricultural Employment Business and repair 1.9 4.0 6.5 6.6 6.9 263.2 Personal 5.7 4.0 4.1 3.5 3.4 -40.4 Entertainment and recreation 1.0 1.1 1.3 1.9 2.0 100.0 Professional 17.2 20.7 21.9 24.4 24.9 44.8 SOURCE: U.S.
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DISABILITIES AND THE CONTEMPORARY LABOR MARKET TABLE 8 Number of Employees and Shares of Employment, by Occupation, United States, 1960-1999 313 Year Percent Change, Occupation 1960 1970 1980 1990 1996 1999 1960-1999 Professional specialty and managerial occupations Technical, sales, and administrative workers Service workers Precision production and craft workers Operatives, fabricators, and non-farm laborers 15.6 Numbers (millions) 14.6 19.4 26.5 30.6 36.5 40.5 177.4 14.0 18.6 8.0 9.7 8.6 10.2 24.3 36.9 13.0 16.0 12.5 13.7 17.6 18.4 18.2 18.2 37.7 38.9 17.2 17.9 13.6 14.6 177.9 123.8 69.8 18.2 16.7 Farming and fishing occupations 5.2 3.3 2.7 3.5 3.6 3.4 -34.6 Percent Share of Employment Professional specialty and managerial occupations 22.1 24.7 27.3 25.8 28.8 30.3 37.1 Technical, sales, and administrative workers 21.3 23.6 25.0 31.1 29.7 29.2 37.1 Service workers 12.2 12.4 13.3 13.5 13.6 13.4 9.8 Precision production and craft workers 13.0 12.9 12.9 11.6 10.7 10.9 -16.2 Operatives, fabricators, and non-farm laborers 23.6 22.4 18.9 15.2 14.4 13.6 -42.4 Harming and fishing occupations 7.8 4.0 2.8 2.9 2.8 2.6 -66.7 SOURCE: U.S.
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. The proportion of all employment that is part-time due to economic reasons increased from 2.8 to 4.3 percent between 1970 and 1990, but decreased to 2.5 percent as of 1999, because of the improvement in the labor market.
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Interestingly, job tenure has been falling for both men and women since 1996, suggesting that the strong labor market in the late l990s may have resulted in shorter tenures as workers left old jobs for new ones and Nose who had been out of work found jobs (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000~.
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It should be reemphasized, however, that the recent decline may be due to the strength of the labor market in the last few years and may not reflect a long-term trend in the security of employment. Alternative Work Arrangements Alternative work arrangements involve the shift from the direct hiring of workers to perform certain functions to the purchase of the services of other firms for Dose functions.
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Although it would be hard to capture these qualitative changes in working conditions in large-scale labor market surveys, they may be more important in determining the employment prospects of persons with disabilities than the more objective changes in employment described above. Rates of Displacement BLS defines job displacement as the loss of a job held on a long-term basis Three or more years)
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measures only limitations in work, which reduced the prevalence of disability in the working-age population to about 8.0 percent in that year.3 The CPS disability measure no doubt captures the severe end of the impairment spectrum, thereby artifactually reducing estimates of labor force participation rates among persons with disabilities. The impact of the different definitions of disability on estimates of labor force participation has recently become a topic of discussion in the disability literature (Hale, 2001~.
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. SOlIS Wlth dlsanllltles continue to nave lower labor force participation rates than persons without disabilities (51.8 and 83.0 percent, respectively)
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. Recall from Tables 2 and 3, that the decline in labor force participation rates among men was concentrated among those age 55 to 64, particularly nonwhite men in this age range, and that the increase in labor force participation rates among women was concentrated among women age 25 to 34, especially white women in this age range.
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abilities, but even when persons with disabilities have gone to graduate school, they still have lower labor force participation rates than persons without disabilities who have not completed high school. Employment Characteristics and Persons with Disabilities Given employment, do persons with disabilities have access to the same mix of jobs and to the same working conditions as those without disabilities?
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Occupations The occupations with an increased share of employment over the last several decades include professional and managerial occupations; technical, sales, and administrative workers; and service occupations, while craft workers, operatives, and farming and fishing occupations have had declining shares of employment. With respect to occupations with an increased share of employment, persons with disabilities are much less likely than those without to be in professional and managerial occupations; they are almost as likely to be in technical, sales, and administrative occupations; and they are more likely to be service workers (Table 13~.
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Among persons without disabilities, parttime employment for economic reasons has fallen steadily since the mid1980s, or by 41.9 percent overall between 1981 and 1999. Persons with disabilities experienced a substantial increase in parttime employment for noneconomic reasons during the early part of the l990s, leading to an overall increase of 41.2 percent in this measure over the entire period under study.
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Instead, the measures tenure, contingency, flexibility, alternative work arrangements, and work at home are not collected routinely and, when collected, are part of surveys in which respondents are not asked to report disability status. Because of the lack of consistent data on terms of employment among persons with and without disabilities from the Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys, we report here the results of a comprehensive survey of heal and employment among California adults, the 1999 California Work and Health Survey (Table 15~.
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19.3 18.7 24.8 15.7 24.2a Job tenure, mean 6.8 6.2 8.0 6.5a Psychological characteristics of jobs Required to learn new things 89.5 88.9 94.2 89.1 94.6 Has little freedom to decide how to do work 25.2 25.2 24.8 23.9 24.9 Makes a lot of decisions on one's own 82.0 82.0 82.6 83.4 83.0 Has enough time to get job done 77.5 77.8 75.2 76.8 74.6 Required to work very fast without breaks 43.0 43.4 38.8 42.6 38.9 High-demand, low-control jobs 14.7 14.9 11.6 11.7 14.6 ap < .05. bContingent employment includes nonpermanent workers and temporary agency employees.
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Accordingly, we use the California Work and Health Survey to analyze differences between persons with and without disabilities in rates of job loss (Table 16~. In contrast to the findings with respect to working conditions, persons with disabilities reported much higher rates of job displacement than those without; adjustment for age and gender did not alter this finding.
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However, the major trends in employment the decline in labor force participation among older men, the increase among younger women, the shift from manufacturing to service industries and occupations, and the emergence of new terms of employment have been unfolding for several decades, and with the possible exception of the decline in labor force participation among older men and the end of the increase in labor force participation among women, there are no major disjunctures forecast for the remainder of these trends in the years to come (Bowman, 1997~. More importantly, this review is a description of whether persons with disabilities do work and, if so, how and where, not of whether they can work.
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MEASURING FUNCTIONAL DEMANDS OF THE CONTEMPORARY AND FUTURE LABOR MARKETS O* Net6 (Occupational Information Network)
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; (4) occupation characteristics (labor market information, occupational outlook, and wages)
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At that time, many analysts saw automation as the principal threat to the labor market, with rising unemployment and de-skilling of jobs the necessary result of this trend. Today, we are concerned about the erosion of job security and we wonder how many of us can cope with the demands of the service economy (and even the manufacturing sector)
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2001. The Federal Effort to Identify People with Disabilities in the Current Population Survey.
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1997. Trends in labor force participation among persons with disabilities, 1983-1994.
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2000. Successful labor market transitions for persons with disabilities: Factors affecting the probability of entering and maintaining employment.
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