Book Review

Title:  The Labor Market Experience of Workers with Disabilities:  The ADA and Beyond
Author: Julie L. Hotchkiss
Publisher: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2003
http://www.upjohninst.org/publications/titles/lmewd.html
Cost: $20 paperback, $40 hardcover
ISBN: 0-88099-251-4 paperback or 0 88099-252-2 hardcover 
Reviewer:  Cal Montgomery

  Julie Hotchkiss asks whether the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has made any difference 
in the labor market experience of people with disabilities and concludes that it has not.  Moreover, 
she argues, it is unlikely that this is due to employersÕ failure to comply with the law nor that people 
with disabilitiesÕ labor market experience doesnÕt need to be improved.  ÒIt is probable É that the 
lack of notable impact of the ADA É implies that, like many other pieces of legislation with a 
strong social and moral content, it was adopted in an environment that had already embraced its 
principles and mandates, for the most partÓ (p. 142). 

  The former argument is backed up by statistical analysis and may prove useful to American 
policymakers, HotchkissÕs target audience, and to researchers looking at disability and employment 
(following the argument closely requires familiarity with statistics).  The latter argument is a quick 
sketch and not a major contribution to debates about how best to address the employment crisis for 
Americans with disabilities.

  In other words, readers interested in whether the ADA has ÒworkedÓ for workers and jobseekers 
with disabilities Ð and who can follow statistical arguments Ð will find this book worth considering.

  But to evaluate current and proposed policy it isnÕt enough to ask whether the ADA has changed 
anything; one has to ask why.  There is no consensus among those concerned with disability policy 
that by 1990 employers had embraced the idea that disability discrimination is wrong, much less the 
idea that the barriers that provoke reasonable accommodation requests constitute discrimination, and 
The Labor Market Experience of Workers with Disabilities will not satisfy readers on this point 
unless they have already independently arrived at HotchkissÕs conclusion.

  John Jay Frank (2004), to give one example, has called for more research into what happens when 
people ask for accommodation and barrier removal.  Calling the attempt to challenge discrimination 
through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Justice Òineffective,Ó 
Frank says that Òthe issue for those of us facing barriers is the way the law is circumscribed and 
ignored.Ó

  The issue for Hotchkiss has nothing to do with the law being circumscribed or ignored; and her 
recommendations for improving education, training, and job matching and for restructuring the 
incentives and disincentives are not atypical.  But she does not adequately answer those disability 
advocates who believe that evidence of widespread discrimination was provided to Congress when it 
was considering the ADA and that if little has changed for workers and jobseekers with disabilities, 
discrimination clearly persists.

References

Frank, J. J. (2004). Time to gather our own evidence. Retrieved July 29, 2004, from 
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/frankADAres0704.html
Cal Montgomery is a disabled reader, a writer, and an activist living in Chicago, who writes 
regularly for Ragged Edge magazine.