The employment of autistic people is a complex social issue, and the rate of unemployment remains among the highest among all workers with physical and neurological disabilities. The rate of employment for autistic people is generally seen to be very low in the US and across the globe, but accurate measurement is rare, as studies often have small sample sizes and rely on self-reporting. A 2021 report in the United Kingdom found 71% of autistic adults are unemployed.Office for National Statistics (2021). Outcomes for disabled people in the UK. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/disability/articles/outcomesfordisabledpeopleintheuk/2021 In the United States, estimates of unemployment range from 39%Ohl, A., Grice Sheff, M., Small, S., Nguyen, J., Paskor, K., & Zanjirian, A. (2017). Predictors of employment status among adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder. WORK, 56(2), 345-355. https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-172492 (Original work published 2017) to 85%.Autism Unemployment Rate: Addressing the Employment Gap: Challenges and Opportunities for Adults with Autism. https://www.keyautismservices.com/blog/autism-unemployment-rate#:~:text=as%20in%20Europe-,United%20States,2023%20data%2C%20private%20estimates,-Impact%20of%20disclosure Many autistic adults face significant barriers to full-time employment and have few career prospects despite the fact that approximately 50% of autistic individuals have a normal or high-normal IQ and no significant physical disabilities. In fact, autistic young adults are more likely to be unemployed than people with learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, or speech/language impairment.
The majority of autistic people want and are able to work, and there are well-publicized examples of successful careers. On the other hand, many autistic people have long been kept in specialized institutions, and even larger numbers remain dependent on their families. The most restricted prospects are for nonverbal people with behavioral disorders. Even highly functional autistic adults are often underemployed, and their jobs options are limited to low-skilled, part-time, discontinuous jobs in sheltered workshops. Many countries with anti-discrimination laws based on disability also often exclude autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as many companies and firms lobby against its inclusion.
A wide variety of careers and positions are potentially accessible, although positions requiring little human interaction are notoriously favored, and associated with greater success. Sectors such as intelligence and information processing in the military, the hospitality and restaurant industry, translation and copywriting, information technology, art, handicraft, mechanics and nature, agriculture and animal husbandry are particularly sought-after and adapted.
Several issues for low employment (and high lay off) rate of autistic people have been identified in peer-reviewed literature:Lerman, D. Neurodevelopmental Disabilities and Employment; Routledge, 2023. 10.4324/9781003311935.
Frequent discrimination on the job market reduces the prospects of autistic people, who are also often victims of unsuitable work organization. A number of measures can be put in place to resolve these difficulties, including job coaching, and adapting working conditions in terms of sensoriality and working hours. Some companies practice affirmative action, particularly in the IT sector, where "high-functioning" autistic people are seen as a competitive asset.
Nevertheless, these efforts have had mostly cosmetic effect, and did not result in a statistically significant improvement in the employment outcome of autistic adults. In a 2021 Forbes article Michael S. Bernick wrote:
History
The issue of employment is a very recent one in the debates on autism. People diagnosed with infantile autism have long been considered unable to work. According to American investigative journalist Steve Silberman, when American psychiatrist Edward Ritvo and his team published an article in 1988 suggesting that autistic adults were capable of having a family life and a job, they were laughed at by most specialists at the time.
At the end of the 20th century the diagnostic criteria for autism were broadened, making it easier and earlier to detect. This led to an increase in the number of diagnoses: autism affects around 1% of the world's population (in 2016), with varying degrees of disability. The DSM-5 criteria allow diagnosis on the basis of difficulties in communication and social interaction, and restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests, with a "clinically significant impact in terms of functioning" in social, academic and occupational terms. These symptoms are present from early childhood, but "may be masked later in life by learned strategies". There is thus a wide diversity of profiles among autistic adults, in terms of skills, social functioning and interests. This variability depends on individual factors such as intelligence, language skills and the presence of co-morbidities, as well as environmental factors such as family support, the provision of appropriate interventions and services, quality of life and various socio-emotional factors.
In the United States, and California in particular, associations and public figures have been campaigning for the employment of autistic people since at least 1999. That same year, Temple Grandin, herself autistic, published a short article recommending the use of autistic people's employment skills, in particular visual thinking. At the end of 2000, researcher Sophie Nesbitt worked with the UK's National Autistic Society (NAS) to study the employability of people diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. The gradual inclusion of autism in the field of disability at international level is reflected in the Council of Europe directive of 27 November 2000, advocating "non-discrimination in employment and occupation", which applies to autistic workers. Its French version is the 2005 Law for Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation and Citizenship for People with Disabilities, which led to the creation of the departmental homes for the disabled. Between 2003 and 2008, the number of autistic adults in the US receiving Vocational Rehabilitation Services more than tripled.
In 2015 UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon pointed out that the majority of autistic adults worldwide are unemployed. In February 2017, the first French report dedicated to the employment of autistic adults was submitted by Josef Schovanec, PhD in philosophy and social sciences (EHESS), himself autistic, stating that "in France, the employment of autistic people is clearly still in its infancy". In the UK, the National Autistic Society (NAS) handed over a petition to the British government on 21 February 2017, signed by 30,000 people, calling for the employment of autistic adults to be made a priority. The Malakoff-Médéric foundation opens a specialized French site at the end of 2018.
Scientific literature
Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist who discovered infantile autism, followed the progress of the eleven children (generally from privileged backgrounds) he diagnosed for the publication of his landmark study in 1943. Many went on to obtain decent jobs (in particular "patient 0", Donald Triplett), while those placed in institutions had little or no autonomy in adulthood. The first identified study of socio-professional outcome dates from 1970, based on five to fifteen years' follow-up of people diagnosed at the time with infantile psychosis. Specific studies began to be carried out in the United States in the second half of the 1980s.
In 2010 American psychiatrist and researcher Dawn Hendricks published Employment and adults with autism spectrum disorders: Challenges and strategies for success. Highlighting the very low employment rate and the desire of autistic adults to work, she argued for the option of employment support to be made available to all. The following year, an article by French-Canadian researcher and psychiatrist Laurent Mottron appeared in the scientific journal Nature, entitled "Changing perceptions: The power of autism". Testifying to his experience of working with autistic researchers, including Michelle Dawson, as part of his team at the University of Montreal, he hopes that more autistic people will be involved in research teams:[...] They are there because of their intellectual and personal qualities. I believe they contribute to science because of their autism, not in spite of it. Everyone knows stories of autistic people with extraordinary scholarly abilities, such as Stephen Wiltshire, who can exquisitely draw detailed cityscapes from memory after a helicopter ride. None of my lab members are savants. They are 'ordinary' autistic people [...]. – Laurent Mottron, Changing perceptions: The power of autism.The first review specifically devoted to the employment rehabilitation of autistic adults, published in January 2014 by David B. Nicholas et al., covers 10 studies, and highlights the lack of scientific literature available. In September 2016, Yosheen Pillay and Charlotte Brownlow's review of Predictors of Successful Employment Outcomes for Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders: a Systematic Literature Review, based on 297 articles, was published.
In May 2019, a new review of the scientific literature devoted entirely to factors promoting employment for autistic people, by Melissa Scott and her team, was published: it covered 134 studies of inclusion factors, 36 of which evaluated the effectiveness of employment interventions. The vast majority of these studies were carried out in the United States.
Targeted hiring experiments
Since the end of the 2000s a number of countries have launched plans to hire autistic people, not for medico-social reasons, but out of interest in their skills in specific tasks. The business model of structures specializing in the recruitment of autistic adults is based on the valorization of these skills enabled by neuroatypia. Autism is generally considered an asset by Silicon Valley employers. In Germany, Denmark, the United States and India, companies in the IT sector practice positive discrimination. Job coaching is on the increase, particularly in the Czech Republic, Germany, the US and Ireland. Meticulon in Canada, Auticon in Germany, and Asperger Syndrome Training Employment Partnership Entreprise in the USA, use job coaching with a single referent for the autistic employee. In Belgium, the "Passwerk" scheme, created in 2008, is based on intensive individual coaching for autistic employees.
In 2008, the AQA (Asperger Quality Assurance) project was launched in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, to enable the professional inclusion of high-performance autistic adults in the software testing field, targeting quality positions in multinational companies. The software testing and consulting company Specialisterne, which operates in 16 countries and is headquartered in Denmark, was founded by the father of an autistic child, and employs 70% autistic workers in adapted positions. In 2012, two Mossad agents launched the Ro'im Rachok project, an Israeli army intelligence unit that specifically recruits autistic teenagers to analyze aerial and satellite photographs. In 2013, the German software company SAP announced that it was looking for 650 autistic people for its research and development department, with the aim of having 1% autistic employees. In 2015, Microsoft announced the launch of a program to hire full-time autistic employees at its Redmond headquarters. In France, since 2014, the Andros group, supported by the Orange Foundation, has been taking on autistic employees at its Normandy plant. Most are nonverbal, and work part-time.
These targeted hirings through positive discrimination remain rare and isolated initiatives. They are not enough to remedy the underemployment of autistic people.