80% of people on Autism spectrum are unemployed?

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In my country, the employment rate for HFA/AS is quite high; over the economic crisis, it was higher than the NT employment rates (taking the technical definition).

A lot of employers are starting to see the benefits of people on the spectrum, and are actively searching for us to recruit into specific fields (data entry, research, QA..., primarily in the STEM fiends)

high-functioning autistic unemployment in holland is now roughly on par with that of the NT unemployment, but numbers are still scewed becouse LFA is combined in the statistic, which isn't really fair.
the central statistics bureau here excludes LFA from the 'employable population' which correct for those that aren't looking for work (for various reasons: students, children, low-functioning autism, mental retardation, stay-at-home muns/dads...)

Statistics regarding criminal offenders are only true of those who got caught, but not very representative of the general part of population who commit crimes. Following that logic, any statistic that regards people on the ASD spectrum, will concern only those who were diagnosed. And there are many who are on the spectrum and live their lives fitting in, working and never being diagnosed and therefore not being included in these statistics.

No magazine is a reputable source as magazines make money by presenting facts in attention drawing or shocking way and are not obligated to be scientifically sound.


I would follow to find a source in that article, and if the article does not have sources then this fact may as well be rubbish.


This is not to say that these statistics could not be true. I only begin noticing that having scientific degrees, multiple fields of expertise and many more qualities that should be most appealing for the employer - mean nothing if you do not have excellent social skills and can interact with people. Degrees, qualifications and skills are actually nothing compared to people connections - most people get good jobs thanks to people they know.

Here is an excerpt from an Article at Autism Now:

Unless it was a peer reviewed journal, which some casually refer to as magazines.

These numbers get cited pretty frequently, but my intuition is that they're pretty unreliable. The problem is you have to consider who they're polling, which is going to be adults on the spectrum. A large percentage of adults on the spectrum are un-diagnosed, and therefore are not going to be represented in such statistics. Moreover, it seems likely, to me at least, that there is going to be some correlation between adults who pass well enough to avoid diagnosis and adults who pass well enough to function in the work force.

Additionally, as others have pointed out "unemployed" and "not working" are not the same thing. The 80% number is definitely the "not working" number. In the case of the general US workforce, not working is 38%, while unemployment is 5.5%. So these numbers can be drastically different.

Good find! Those numbers seem more realistic to me than the 80-85% unemployment number that gets bandied about so often.

That is about right and the reasons are mainly an inaccessible job selection technique. If a candidate for a job interview is allistic or another kind of neurotypical then he or she has a face to face interview which is mediated through eye contact and body language. This option is unavailable to the autistic/Asperger syndrome person unless the person does social skills classes in communication styles of the 'neurotypically handicapped' which can take years.

Another method is to allow for a side to side interview technique in which the Asperger syndrome candidate can see and the interviewer can see the aspie interviewee's open eye visuals and build together a flowchart that only the two people see and with translation by mumbling as well like visual processing autistic people do. The idea is to construct a flowchart between two people with the same colour as matching the interviewer's colour of his or her aura. This is for Asperger syndrome people that have some kind of visual learning style and or synaesthesia of which the most useful as far as job interview techniques is an emotion-colour synaesthesia with ability to see person's open eye visuals which are social cues which are analogous to allistic people's eye contact and body language.

Also if an Asperger syndrome person constructs a perfectly fitting flowchart of the same colour which means either he or she got the job or has a second round interview and if that involves an equally matching flowchart in shape and colour then the the person is offered the opening. It depends after that stage how his or her colleagues treat the person and what type of work that is available. Or if there is bullying in the workplace or the work can be boring which may cause difficulties with keeping ones mind occupied but it can be done if you know you are getting a decent wage/salary. Factors such as aspiphobic bullying in the workplace ignorance of autistic spectrum conditions and sensory issues play a factor of keeping a lot of autistic/Asperger syndrome people out of the workplace and onto benefits or slips through the gaps in terms of support.

I think the 80% number comes from a single paper on autistic adults in a scandinavian country with good social welfare, where most autistic adults are on welfare by late teens and don't seek work.

My disabilities prevent me from working.

I personally am underemployed. I do a little consultation on people's home gardens, I do tree work( mostly fruit trees ), and I also mill gunstock blanks. My main problem is selling myself, which I am sure is the problem for most of us.

...How in the world do I ever , ASIDE from my health and economic stus (i.e. , being homeless) and trauma issues " find out what I want to do " , and get sufficiently trained/connected/lucky at it?

Please do not use this as an excuse people. I understand that some people here are disabled but we are gifted people who are too complex for NT's to understand.
We do better at jobs in which we have to use our magnificent brainpower. Do not get discouraged. Go to college at 35 if you have to (like me). I kept working these jobs that require no skills and I felt like I would get walked over.

Another tool is to learn emotions and try to relate to people. Do not always spurt out technical information when having a conversation. Ask people how they feel and try to think from their shoes. Nobody likes a know it all.

I am unemployed, got HFA but I got an interview as a driver for refugees on Tuesday. Unemployment among us is so high because we aren't even given a chance to show that we can be productive. Employers commonly would want a social unproductive employee over an unsocial workaholic because they value the social aspect more. So maybe try to find a job were you don't have to be social such as managing records in the basement of an office, programming or B2B delivery work.

But it's not an unrealistic assumption either.

Glass Half-Full, Glass Half-Empty.

There's plenty of them, though. Some in the US (one in the US had the highest employment rate for AS I've found at around 30 percent, even if they were jobs well below the intellectual capabilities of the individuals).

They tend to have close results, which is unsurprising if the disorder is defined the same way worldwide.