The real reason why Aspies are often unemployable.

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And I agree with you.

What I meant was your response to management would make me nervous like a school girl

Aspies are unemployable because they're disabled; they frequently can't deal with stress or have the social skills necessary to survive.

I think I was declared unemployable because of my anxiety and lack of social skills. My sensory issues may have played a part as well.

I simply have too many difficulties to accommodate, and without a degree I firmly believe I have no hope of ever finding full-time employment.

Employers are never likely to hire someone who exhibits the following:

- Poor at making and maintaining eye contact.
- An abysmal attention span due to sound sensitivities and possibly undiagnosed ADD.
- Misunderstanding abstract language.
- Terrible reading comprehension.
- A working memory that makes Homer Simpson look like Einstein.
- Inability to multi-task.
- Communication difficulties, which continue to regress with each passing year. I never know what to say to other people and inevitably awkward silences are frequent when I am around.


I honestly believe that I am too dumb to survive in this world.

Well...I mean the factors people are mentioning here do often lead to un/underemployment, especially if the disability is severe, but not always. Yes, if people want you to show up regularly and interact with others, you need to be able to do that well. It's not trivial, it's because people have to be able to communicate well and get along well in teams to get their work done efficiently. If every little thing has to be spelled out, and people are pissing each other off, the projects bog down.

Literalness and inattention to norms are problems, too. I knew a guy once who almost had a breakdown trying to paint a room. That was the job: paint this room. Put the paint, which is right here, on the walls of this room, which you are standing in, using those brushes, which are on the floor in front of you. But he wanted to know to the millimetre where the paint was supposed to go, how thick, in what direction, etc., etc., etc. He didn't understand that it really wasn't that complicated. And actually I'm sure that if he hadn't had explicit instructions he'd have screwed it up somehow, painted the ceiling or something too. He didn't look at the job and think "what do most people mean by this" and have an answer come to mind. He had problems with an envelope-stuffing job, too: got all caught up in variables nobody cared about, or would have had to explain to others, and then got so frustrated he started yelling when he couldn't get the instructions he wanted. Got fired and escorted out of the building. He didn't have a lot of friends, either. Basically he had one friend and then a lot of acquaintances he called friends, even after he hadn't seen or talked to them for years.

On the other hand, he had vast and very well-articulated knowledge, and a degree, in a pretty arcane field: library cataloguing. Eventually he found professional work as a cataloguer in a forgiving environment where someone already knew him. It didn't matter that he didn't dress well or flapped his hands or was often fatigued. Cataloguers don't deal much with the public, mostly they're just dealing with the materials. The job was hard to come by, because there aren't a lot of library jobs, but he was able to get by once he got the job. It probably helped that he was able to seem social and make eye contact (if brief and weirdly intense eye contact) for short spans, so he made a decent first impression. A lot of it just had to do with applying and applying and applying and not getting discouraged even when the interviews went horribly.

Keeping the job often comes down to the boss and remembering that you really do have to show up and do the job (without complaining about it or making rude remarks). If you have a boss who understands the scope of your abilities and what you're good at, and has a use for those things, then as long as you don't get creative and start making changes unilaterally (which will probably just make more work for your boss), you'll probably be fine.

I've got quite a few difficulties that I feel make me unemployable in today's society where social skills are valued far more than the actual skills required to do the job well.

1. Executive function difficulties
2. Anxiety issues
3. Trouble multitasking
4. Communication difficulties
5. Mediocre attention span
6. Not very good conversation and social skills

I've only gotten two interviews in the last eight years, and didn't get either job.