Why are only 12% of us employed?

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I blame Milton Friedman.

It's called Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment or NAIRU.

Thanks to this quack theory, governments deliberately plot to keep people unemployed.
Naturally, those with less social capabilities are more likely to be standing when the music stops.

Governments swear by NAIRU even though it's total nonsense.

There isn't a circle of Hell unpleasant enough for Milton Friedman. Hell should exist if only for him.

I've had loads of jobs in the past and currently work part-time but it's not without it's problems. I think I've been through every problem in the book over the years. It's quite intangible to try to describe it though. A lot of it in my case is due to difficulty 'faking it' rather than difficulty with the work as such. I think in general NTs are relatively accepting (or at least pretend to be) of people who appear to be visibly disabled whereas they don't really 'get it' when it comes to aspies. It kinda confuses me how it can be acceptable for people to label me 'weird' and how it can be acceptable for people to accuse me of being lesbian even if I openly admit to being asexual. Like, yeah, I have issues with noise and sometimes misinterpret what people say / mean and stuff but it's more narrow-mindedness on the part of other people in terms of accepting what I am that I find to be the problem. Work is just stress.

The other problem I have is that I get rejected from jobs for so many stupid reasons:

1. Being overqualified.
2. Because I've had so many jobs they think I won't stay or just assume there's something wrong with me... ???
3. Difficulty building rapport in interviews.
4. Psychometric testing... (I have been rejected from so many jobs because of it)...

I can understand why a lot of people don't work because the job I have is kinda demeaning considering my qualifications... hate it

I was diagnosed with HFA/AS a number of years ago and have been working steady for the last 15 years. Yes, I have been fired from a few jobs, but I always seem to find new work rather quickly.

I am wondering how the data was obtained for this study. Did they calculate those that needed special accomodations or were reported to the government to be of a protected class? I bet there are many more people on the spectrum that are working, but have not reported that they have autism/AS to either their employer or the government. Also, I have to agree there are many undiagnosed people as well in the workplace.

re personality testing for the work force - I did manage to keep jobs for 2-3 years at a time. i think i did it by becoming somebody else. do you know the Carl Jung / Myers-Briggs tests (aka MBTI)? i am naturally an INFP. but to keep a job, i had to become an ENFJ (which was the best I could do). It was so stressful it darn near destroyed me. I'm talking decades of it.

It's kind of funny - if you take a personality test as the Working Person and then take the same test as the Real Person and get different personality types. I guess I was adapting in order to survive.

If you want here's a test:
MBTI Testing

And here's an explanation:
MBTI explanation

I have to follow my own routine and I don't take well to being told what to do by others (to the point of going Hulk Smash), no matter what it is.

Hence, unemployable.

Plus, I can't handle being around other people.

IMO, all the people who have been discriminated against, or fired just for lack of social skills, should sue the company involved. I dunno about the laws in the US, but here in the UK we have the Disability Discrimination Act which you can use to sue a company if you feel you've been treated unfairly because of a disability.

It's seriously not fair that quite a few people seem to be out of work just because of discrimination.

nowadays i would definitely sue but on the occasions that i was actually fired i wasn't diagnosed. with hindsight i could have claimed discrimination on grounds of being asexual on one of the instances except that i was too socially ret*d to know what was going on at the time! if i could quit working i would.

in the past i think there could have been quite a niche for us but now they have computers to do all the tasks that we might previously have excelled at

Hello Xenon13,

I can't say I blame you for being unhappy. If it were possible to reduce unemployment without serious harm elsewhere, there would be a good case for doing it.

For decades after World War II, economists and politicians thought we could do just that, through more government spending, printing more money, cutting interest rates, buying back more government bonds and the like.

We ended up with rampant inflation and high unemployment in the 1970s. That lovely little episode - which I remember quite un-fondly, thank you - was known as stagflation. That and also the high interest rates of the time made it the worst of all worlds.

One reason economics is known as the dismal science is that economists sometimes have to tell people things they don't want to hear.

One thing we've learned is that you can't just make a straight-up trade between unemployment and inflation. People take inflation into account when they make wage and price demands and purchasing choices, without necessarily hiring any more people.

In the short run, yes the Federal Reserve and other central banks can inflate the economy and encourage more hiring. In the long run, inflation is like a drug: economies build up a tolerance for inflation as businesses and individuals make employment and other decisions based on the rate of inflation they expect.

Not to mention if people don't start saving enough to keep interest rates as low on their own as the central banks try to push them, the banks can either keep the inflation going indefinitely, or pull the rug out from under many long-term capital projects which simply can't keep going on what people will voluntarily save and invest. That means business closures and layoffs, among other things.

So, much as you might like to shoot the messenger - that isn't going to create any more jobs.

One thing that made me get an official diagnosis was that I was kicked out of an internship class because I was too focused on my work to make enough small talk and acknowledge people. I also had some seasonal jobs, as well as some temporary ones, but it's been difficult to get hired based on an interview. I was able to get on an eligible list through the county for jobs, but with budget cuts, I don't expect to get any interviews anytime soon. In this economy, the only job I was able to get was in fast food, and even there I had my hours cut to where I'm only working 3 hours a week, and it's a good week if I can get in 6 hours because business has been really slow. I'm going to keep this job until I can find another one, but there really hasn't been that many places that are hiring, and for every opening, you have at least 50 applicants, many of them people who were laid off after working for many years at a job.

Employees see us as a bunch of defectives, who need to be wiped out. They don't want to bother with us.

It's probably because most people are diagnosed as children and those of us who have jobs aren't as likely to be diagnosed. Not to mention that AS children are probably brought up thinking that they can't ever get a job.

There would be more than than small amount with jobs, just not all would have a diagnosis.