EEOC Moves to Stem Decline in Disabled Workforce

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission plans to sponsor educational events and seminars aimed at reversing the steady decline in the number of federal employees with severe disabilities.

The agency this week launched a special section on its Web site ( http://www.eeoc.gov/initiatives/lead ), where announcements and information on federal hiring of the disabled will be posted. The initiative -- Leadership for the Employment of Americans With Disabilities, or LEAD -- will be headed by EEOC Commissioner Christine M. Griffin .

"In order to improve the overall employment rate for people with targeted disabilities, we have to begin with the federal government," Griffin said in a statement. "Congress directed the federal government to set the example for all other employers. Our example needs improvement."

People with severe disabilities have dropped to less than 1 percent of the full-time federal workforce, according to data released by the EEOC in June. Targeted disabilities include blindness, deafness, paralysis, mental retardation, mental illness, convulsive disorders, and distortion of limbs or the spine.

About 10 percent of U.S. residents have a severe disability, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

From fiscal 2001 to 2005, disabled federal employees left the government at more than twice the rate at which they were hired, the EEOC said.

In fiscal 2005, for example, there were 810 newly hired employees with severe disabilities, while 2,197 severely disabled employees left the government's workforce.

Data suggest that federal employment of the disabled peaked in fiscal 1994, when there were 31,337 such employees in government. By 2005, the number of severely disabled workers had dropped to 24,086, the EEOC said. The federal workforce has remained relatively stable, at about 1.8 million, over the past two decades.

Experts do not know what accounts for the decline, in part because of a lack of research and data. Some suggest that more disabled workers are retiring, as the baby-boom generation leaves the workforce. Some think that federal hiring practices work against the disabled, and some think the private sector has opened more doors to the disabled over the past decade.

The EEOC said LEAD will try to increase awareness among federal hiring officials about the drop-off in employment of the disabled and educate agencies on how to use special rules to bring the disabled on board.

LEAD also will seek to educate job applicants with severe disabilities on how to apply under the special rules.

Focus groups will be set up with federal hiring officials, managers and experts to explore the issue of declining employment of the disabled, the EEOC said.