Unemployment of adults on the autism spectrum is huge, thought to be at a rate of around 80-90% of people diagnosed as on the autism spectrum have no full time work.  Many have no work at all, others have some casual employment or work in sheltered employment where the pay rates can be $1-$5 per hour depending on their assessed productivity (although they also get to keep the main income of their disability allowance).

Those who have employment often work within a family business where their condition is already understood.  Many people on the autism spectrum have pleaded for autism-friendly work with the autism agencies which usually have only unpaid voluntary positions for them.  In fact many adults on the autism spectrum may spend up to ten years in unpaid voluntary work and never get paid work in the same organisations.

I was pulled out of school at the age of 15.  Whilst it is against the law, both of my brothers had left school at the age of 12.   My older brother went to work with my father selling used cars.  My younger brother went to work with my mother in a factory.  At 15 my first job, as a button hole machinist, lasted 3 days before I was sacked for having put button holes into the collars, back panels and sleeves of thousands of dollars worth of fur coats.  In the three years that followed I had over 30 jobs in three years, some ending within days, some ending within weeks or, if I was lucky, months.  Often I was sacked, other times I ran away or couldn’t bring myself to step onto the bus to work.

I worked in factories, as a cleaner, as a kitchen hand and dish washer and as a cafe waitress and faced bullying, ridicule, sexual harassment (I was groped and twice pestered to supply sex in exchange for keeping my job) and once got beaten up by a fellow employee.  I was paid poorly, as was standard for those under 18, and by 18 I found myself chronically unemployed.  Offered only work as a topless waitress, I couldn’t take the only job on offer.  Fortunately a psychiatrist referred me to a social worker who helped get me back into education.  But five years of education later, my first job lasted just under 2 weeks and I was again stuck in the cycle of unemployment.

Why do people on the autism spectrum struggle so much to get or keep paid work?  Well, there’s a huge range of issues.  Well, there’s a huge range of issues and not all of them will effect any one person on the spectrum but here’s some of the range:

Faceblindness means everyone is interchangeable and you likely won’t smile when someone greets you or may indiscriminately smile and say hello to all and sundry every time you see them.  Social-Emotional agnosia may mean that facial expression and body language are invisible to your brain.  People can drop all manner of hints and you won’t get them.

Alexithymia may mean you are naturally extremely logical, blunt, struggle to imagine what you can’t see in front of you and struggle to think ahead and inability to process your own emotions and body messages can mean all kinds of unexpected meltdowns.

Object blindness and context blindness can mean you don’t recognise what’s been put in front of you, you lose objects you’re not actually handling, that you struggle to easily learn from the seemingly meaningless activity around you, that you walk through, over and past things others expect you to attend to, that you speak at and over those already speaking to someone,  and that you fail to use contextual cues to initiate activities.

Meaning deafness can mean you nod and say yes when you have little idea what was said, that you copy the speech and phrases of others, that you make guesses at what people are saying or playfully make matches with key words you have understood without taking seriously the broader discussion in any way.

Dyspraxia may mean you knock into things, fail to co-ordinate in fine or gross motor skills, that you tumble incoming information and that you have delayed information processing and experience information overload.  Dyslexia or visual verbal agnosia may mean you either struggle to read written information or you read it but can’t fluently gain meaning from it. Dyscalculia may mean you struggle in jobs requiring money handling. Dysgraphia may mean you struggle in jobs requiring note taking or handwriting.

Untreated co-morbid mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders may mean you are more prone to panic attacks, mania, tics or OCD which others may find amusing, annoying or simply unacceptable in the work place.  Selective Mutism may mean you freeze and become unable to stand up for yourself or disclose what’s happening for you.  Sensory hypersensitivities may be so overwhelming or distracting they become a source of social ridicule or bullying or are seen as too fussy to accommodate in the workplace.  Combined chronic stress of any combination of challenges can then push up the tempo of personality traits into their personality disorder proportions, and personality disorders and paid mainstream employment usually don’t go together.

After years of abuse and exploitation in the workforce, years of short lived jobs or being exploited as an unpaid volunteer with no job on the horizon, or after chronic unemployment, people often consider a self-employment portfolio.

An employment portfolio is a collection of marketable products and skills which can allow someone with a disability to then market those skills to the community.  It may be they can make a music CD, self publish a book, offer gardening or office services (I have employed gardeners and office workers on the autism spectrum for some years now), offer editing skills, computer troubleshooting, face painting or clowning, website design or hosting, house cleaning, ironing and laundry services, transporting people, public speaking, household repairs, house painting, leaflet distribution, consulting services, graphic design, arts or crafts, or start their own plant nursery.

It may be extremely hard to earn an income from any one thing in a self employment portfolio  but the small amounts of irregular income and the social contact it brings can certainly fill some of the void for people unable to gain or sustain full time mainstream employment.

To start building a portfolio of self employment you need a list of your marketable skills and products.  Make sure you have the required experience and qualifications for each and set your fees and charges accordingly.  Find ways to let people know about the work you do.  There are many free websites and blogs you can use to begin marketing your skills and products on the internet and PayPal offers online sales facilities you can link to.  It also doesn’t hurt to have testimonials about your work.  It’s also not a bad idea to give people no cost or low cost demonstrations of your work.  But most importantly, if you are going to try self employment, it will be tough but it’s probably worth it, if, like me, your combined disabilities make you unable to gain full time mainstream employment.

If you are looking for work or have created your own employment portfolio, you can list your skills, product and services at auties.org .

Good luck.

Warmly,

Donna Williams *)

Author, lecturer, autism consultant, artist and musician.

http://www.donnawilliams.net