Measuring Functional Capacity and Work Requirements Summary of a Workshop (1999) / Chapter Skim
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2 Measuring Functional Capacity of Persons with Disabilities in Light of Emerging Demands in the Workplace
2 Measuring Functional Capacity of Persons with Disabilities in Light of Emerging Demands in the Workplace
Pages 4-31
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From page 4... ...
Thus, when we evaluate procedures to assess functional capacity for work now, it is necessary to keep in mind that they must prove relevant to the economy four decades in the future. This paper describes some of the changes in the labor market that have occurred since 1960 and shows the extent to which the labor market experience of people with disabilities reflects these trends.
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From page 5... ...
This overall increase in labor force participation rates masks substantial differences by gender and age. Among all working age men, labor force participation rates declined by more than 10 percent, but men 55 to 64 years old experienced an even steeper decline, 22.8 percent (Table 2-11.
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From page 6... ...
Race. Race plays a part in labor market dynamics and would appear to interact with gender.3 In the last quarter century, labor force participation rates increased among all working age white persons by 11.5 percent, but the increase among all working age black persons was only 3.7 percent (Table 2-2~.
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From page 7... ...
The increases in labor force participation rates were all the more remarkable, given that the absolute number of young and middle-age workers was increasing because of the baby boom generation. Thus, the labor market accommodated an increasing percentage of a substantially larger number of persons.
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From page 8... ...
Moreover, the magnitude of the increase was larger with each increment in educational attainment. Thus, labor force participation rates increased among high school graduates by 11.0 percent, among those with
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From page 9... ...
Although the labor force participation rate for high school graduates increased by 11.0 percent overall after 1970, it decreased slightly between 1990 and 1996. If the latter trend continues or accelerates, more high school graduates will fail to enter the labor market.
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From page 10... ...
The signposts for the changes described by Osterman include flattened workplace hierarchies, broadened and variable work tasks for each job, reduced job tenure, increased use of part-time and temporary workers, alternative work arrangements, and higher rates of job displacement. There is strong evidence in the work disability literature that providing flexible working conditions and job autonomy reduces the probability that an individual with an impairment will stop working (Yelin et al., 1980~.
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From page 11... ...
11 50 Go An o en 50 c)
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From page 12... ...
The change in the share of employment among occupations reflects the shift in the overall economy from the production of goods to the production and distribution of services (Table 2-8~. Thus, the share of employment in professional, specialty, and managerial occupations; technical, sales, and administrative workers; and service workers increased by 30.3, 39.4, and 11.5 percent, respectively, while the share in precision production and craft occupations; operatives, fabricators, and nonfarm laborers; and in farming and fishing occupations decreased by 17.7, 39.0, and 64.0 percent, respectively.
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From page 13... ...
However, the proportion of the total employed population working part-time for economic reasons has actually decreased recently from the 4.3 percent level in 1990 due to the improvement in the labor market. In contrast, the proportion of the total employed population working part-time for noneconomic reasons continues to increase, having grown by more than a third from 1970 to 1996, from 10.4 to 14.0 percent of the employed population.
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From page 14... ...
However, 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 security of employment. 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 those functions.
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From page 15... ...
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From page 16... ...
Flexibility in the pace and schedule of work and autonomy in how work is done are strongly correlated with whether or not someone is able to maintain employment (Yelin et al., 19801. Thus, if the observation that these conditions are more prevalent in work now than in the past were to be true, it might augur an improvement in the employment picture for persons with disabilities.
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From page 17... ...
Trend data on persons with disabilities, however, do not cover the same time periods as the general labor market data reviewed in the previous section, because most federal data series do not collect information on disability status with the same regularity as on such characteristics as gender, race, and age. Labor Force Participation Rates.
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From page 18... ...
The increase in labor force participation rates among women was concentrated among women 25 to 34, especially white women in this age range. Labor force participation rates among men with disabilities 55 to 64 years old declined to a greater degree than among those without disabilities, and black men with disabilities in this age range experienced the largest relative decline in labor force participation of any single group defined by gender, age, race, and disability status.
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. However, at every level of education they have lower labor force participation rates than persons without disabilities, even after statistical adjustment for differences in health and functional status and demographic characteristics (Table 2-11~.
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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, fabricators, and nonfarm laborers, and farming and fishing occupations have had declining shares of employment. With respect to the occupations with an increased share of employment, persons with disabilities are much less likely than those without to be in professional and managerial occupations, about as likely to be in technical, sales, and administrative occupations, and more likely to be service workers (Table 2-13~.
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From page 21... ...
. Instead, the measures tenure, contingency, flexibility, alternative work arrangements, and work at home-are not collected routinely, and when collected, they are part of infrequent surveys in which respondents are not asked to report disability status.
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From page 22... ...
The biannual BLS survey used to establish the rate of job displacement does not include a measure of disability status. The March Supplement to the CPS, in which respondents report their employment status for the year prior to the survey as well as for the prior week, is analyzed here to proxy such a measure (Yelin, 1996~.
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From page 23... ...
Finally, in the 1996 California survey described above, people with disabilities did not report higher rates of job displacement, but they did report that when displacement occurred, it was more likely to result in a major problem in their lives. SUMMARY OF LABOR MARKET DYNAMICS This review of overall trends in the labor market and of trends affecting persons with disabilities has yielded a partial description of how things are, not how they might be in the years to come.
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From page 24... ...
Thus, the question of how to assess functional capacity for work cannot be asked abstractly. Instead, it must be asked assuming a strong demand for labor and the presence of reasonable accommodation, as mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (West, 1991~.
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From page 25... ...
In assessing whether employers are in compliance with the employment requirements of the ADA, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is asked to assess whether an individual can perform a job's essential function, but the law provides little guidance in how to determine what such a function is (Jones, 19911. If it is true that an increasing proportion of jobs involve complexity and dynamism in tasks, competencies, and relationships with colleagues, then it necessarily follows that a system to assess functional capacity must take this complexity into account today and incorporate the ability to measure, if not predict, change in these characteristics in the years to come.
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From page 26... ...
However, recent projections concerning the nature of the labor market call into question some of our predictions about even the near future (Bowman, 1997~. In the last several decades, with the entrance of women into employment, the labor force has grown and the service sector has expanded.
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From page 27... ...
.lanet Norwood, Ph.D. Senior Fellow, The Urban Institute Research on the use of functional capacity and work requirements must start with a thorough examination of the labor market in which this capacity must be used and the conditions that are likely to affect its determination in the future.
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From page 28... ...
Moreover, the labor market and occupational literature indicate that there are many difficult measurement problems related to occupation and job characteristics. Information developed by job incumbents is not always consistent with the information developed by job analysts, and the information developed by job analysts is not always consistent with the views of worker supervisors.
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From page 29... ...
In addition, the task of developing a set of factors for each occupation that makes practical sense is complex and difficult. Clearly, a great deal more careful research and experimentation is required to evaluate what functional capacity to work really means and exactly how it would be applied to persons with disabilities.
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From page 30... ...
Some information is available on the effect of work experience prior to onset of disability on current unemployment status. The CPS supplement has a work history question and the Health and Retirement Survey obtains more systematic work history information.
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From page 31... ...
EMERGING DEMANDS IN TlIE WORKPLACE . 31 The need for clear definitions of concepts to be measured before attempting to measure them was underscored.
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