The real reason why Aspies are often unemployable.

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I tend to agree with this thread, though I would acknowledge that not everyone with AS struggles as much to find work...but yes I can had a few more things to the list that make me not very employable.
The more fast paced the work environment the slower I get due to being overwhelmed
I really don't have very good social skills at all
I cannot stand florecent lights unless I want a very bad headache which will in turn effect my ability to get work done.
I am not always very good at pretending to be happy, people mistake that for me trying to be rude or something.
yes it is quite frusterating.

Yeah. I have a Master's degree. A professional degree for a profession that I am very good at. A profession that's good for aspies, really. But I can't get work. I can't pass the interview process.

It's like that deal in Imperial China where a person had to write a perfect poem about plum blossoms to qualify for a job as a tax collector. The process for getting work isn't designed to see if you can do the job, it's just to make sure you're the right kind of person, the sort of person the culture wants to allow a dignified living. In Imperial China, that was people from the social-class who read poems about plum blossoms. In contemporary US society, it's social butterflies.

My spouse, who is leaving me, spent some time in the evil, horrible "couple's therapy" (read, spouse and therapist get together and talk about how worthless I am, while I am sitting there) complaining about my chronic joblessness and saying, "I had crap jobs, lots of them, over the years!" and going off about my lazy deadbeat nature that I didn't. Later spouse admitted to having quit those jobs whenever, just out of annoyance. Something I have never done, in any of the few jobs I've managed to get. I pointed this out. Spouse says, "Well, it was the Clinton economy, there were lots of jobs." (Having forgotten, in glorious NT style, that the complaints about my joblessness were all Bush-years.) Me, during that glorious worker's paradise of the Clinton economy, hah! One job I had then, I was a top producer until they started taking clients in to meet the drafting crew (me) and decided that I was an embarrassment. They started harassing me, finding flaws in my work that didn't exist and demanding that I fix errors that weren't there. This being impossible, and making my days hell, I quit. The next job I was also a top producer, but when they downsized and laid people off about seven months after I was hired, I was first to go. I asked why, since I was a top producer and that was on the production records. The supervisor said, "Because you don't make this a fun place to work." I'm pretty sure that means, "Because nobody likes you." One of the lowest producers stayed. She gossiped all day and slowed everybody down by not doing her job, but I guess that made it fun. After that I couldn't get a job mopping out movie theatres. I did some self-employment stuff (read, self-underemployment) and it was seven years before I had another 'real' job. And I quit it to go to grad school because I kept getting injured and people were driving me completely unhinged by touching me without warning, and they wouldn't stop no matter how often I asked, and the pay was crap. I thought I could get work where I could actually earn a living and not get injured and not go crazy, but I'm just stupid to waste money and time trying to better my lot when the culture is determined to starve me out. I just got another two rejections today and I kinda wish I'd killed myself when I felt like killing myself. I don't want to do it now. Then again, it's only a matter of time before I can't afford my (dirt cheap) medications and then I will barely be able to talk to people at all, and I probably will really wish I was dead again, so what the hell.

I hate my ex now. Ex says, "I know what it's like to be a social reject," but it's bull. Ex can quit a job and get another. Ex can have a best friend who finds that status to be mutual. Ex has a job with more earning power than I will ever have. And as much as I would have if anybody would actually hire me for the job my master's qualifies me for. But ex has a HS diploma, one semester of college, and NT social skills.

I've had two jobs where ex-navy or ex-army supervisors disliked me a lot. I know they don't let aspies into the Army. I've just been fired for insubordination, poor communication, poor cooperation, and for a project behind schedule. I have worked most of my life, but really have a lot of stress getting along with certain supervisors.

maybe you have better body language than some of us. or maybe you just met the right people. either way not all of us are so lucky.

OK, I haven't read the whole thread, but I don't agree with the original post. Not that the issues aren't there - they are - but that the issues in that post, it seems to me, can be worked around with the right assistance. But if you don't believe it is possible, you can't find that bridge. So that disconnect, between belief and reality, needs to be solved, and it isn't something most people can solve on their own.

What can't be worked around are the issues caused by difficulty managing stress, extreme sensory issues, and other common co-morbids. I've seen those hit people on these boards, and then good choices are difficult. So, yes, a certain percentage of Aspies will find that they are not employable.

Still, what I would like to see is a larger group of people willing to work as the bridge, and invest in what it takes, to get those that could be employed, into meaningful employment. This is a missing gap in services for those with AS right now, particularly when it comes to those on the "higher end" of the spectrum who NEED to use their intelligence in their jobs. I see it every time I visit this board, but I don't have the resources or the time right now to do anything about it ... just, I wish someone would.

Does that make any sense?

DW, what assistance?

I am very clever and highly skilled and just got myself a professional degree in a field that I am very very well suited for. I loved my internship work and, according to my boss-mentor-person there, did an excellent, really impressive job at it.

I got help from family and used all I'd managed to save to try to play the cognitive hand I've been dealt as best I possibly could, and if you judge by my graduate school grades and my internship and volunteer work I made a very smart move.

But I can't get hired, and I asked the Autism Society in my state if they could help me get an official diagnosis so I could get some assistance in finding work and get hiring committees to cut me a break and they said that they could only help me get accommodations after hire, but I don't need that because I tried to get myself into a career where I wouldn't need them, and as far as I know I don't. I just need to get hired. But I can't get hired and there's no assistance for that.

I believed it was possible. And now I'll have to take the kind of job where they just hire anybody and don't care about interviews, and my intelligence and skills won't be used, and the sensory issues and stress problems that I thought I had successfully worked around by choosing a career that didn't set them off will be there for those jobs. If I'm lucky I'll come home shaking every day, puke, and fall into bed but be able to hold it together well enough to not get fired and keep the job long enough that I can get another sh***y job and not end up blacklisted for having changed jobs every month. If not, well, I can live in my mom's garage. Until I can't any more, and am homeless.

And I'm a f-g genius, I am.