Audio Training is key for state's "challenged" job market (story audio) Photos Lewis Smith AccessAbility Exec. VP David King AccessAbility President Barbara Arnold Resources AccessAbility State of Minnesota Vocational Rehabilitation Services Your Voice Join the conversation with other MPR listeners in the News Forum.

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Training is key for state's "challenged" job market
by Jeff Horwich, Minnesota Public Radio
November 5, 2004

Lewis Smith works at AccessAbility in Minneapolis. Smith is recovering from drug addiction, and so falls into the category of "challenged" job-seekers in Minnesota. (MPR Photo/Jeff Horwich)

Economists are still looking for signs the job market is healthy again. But for those who are not healthy themselves, even looking for a job is a major challenge -- in good times and bad. More than 20 percent of working-age Minnesotans have a disability of some sort. Others are recovering from addiction that sent their working lives off the rails.

St. Paul, Minn. — Among the usual job-hunters at a Minnesota Workforce Center, you'll also find people like Christy Nguyen. She's sitting at a computer with a distracted-looking young man, and they're not having much luck.

"When you have mental illness, you have to look for certain jobs," says Nguyen, a job counselor with Metropolitan Community Mental Health in St. Paul. "Not every company is willing to hire someone with mental illness."

Like this man, many of her clients come from immigrant communities. She's often looking for cleaning, dishwashing, or assembly work.

	AccessAbility President Barbara Arnold

"I think it's getting a little bit better," she says. "But given this population, it's difficult all the time, actually.

Jerry Wood, with the state's Vocational Rehabilitation program, says "no matter what the economy is doing, the employment picture of people with disabilities tends to remain fairly flat."

Wood says the reason for flat employment has less to do with the economy than with the limits of state assistance. He says for most disabled clients, if they get state help with training and placement -- they work. If they don't, it can be very hard to connect with an employer. "If we as an agency are only able to work, for example, with 25,000 people a year, we're only going to have so many people complete our process and go to work," he says.

Nationally, estimates of unemployment for those with disabilities run up 75 percent. The demand for employment help always outruns the supply, but it's hard to know by how much because those who don't enter the system aren't counted. At last count, Minnesota vocational rehab programs had 2,600 people on waiting lists.

State assistance often involves placing job seekers with a nonprofit like AccessAbility. Last year the Minneapolis organization put to work 600 people with various employment challenges. Many jobs involve packaging, assembly, or document processing. In one large room, developmentally disabled adults put together information kits for Tempur-Pedic beds. AccessAbility vice president David King describes one of the people hard at work at one of the tables in the room.

	AccessAbility Exec. VP David King

"Nick has been with us about 20 years," King says. "He has cerebral palsy, and so because of the stability of his neck he is able to use a helmet with a stick on the end of it to take hold of the pieces of paper that he's inserting in the boxes."

In four years, AccessAbility has tripled the number of adults it puts to work and eliminated the downtime that used to hit in the first months of the year. Part of that stems from a change in attitude. President Barbara Arnold says AccessAbility started actively pitching itself as an efficient, dependable labor solution -- instead of a social service.

She also says her jobs benefit from the same effect that drives the job market for temp workers: Some companies are more comfortable using contract labor than they are hiring new, full-time workers of their own.

"Sometimes when there's a downturn in the economy, (businesses) start picking up and they're not sure whether they should hire their workforce yet," Arnold says. "And that creates some opportunities for an organization like ours."

AccessAbility also serves as a safety net for people whose past addictions make it difficult to build a job history. Lewis Smith was until recently in treatment "for drugs, alcohol, and bad attitude," as he puts it.

Smith has been in and out of the AccessAbility, as jobs in the community came and went. Right now he is helping direct a team packaging metal poles that go into fake Christmas trees and other products.

"My problem was not listening, not being able to accept opportunities that were put ahead of me," says Smith. "A person can do anything if you take the time and patience to show them what to do."

Officials at AccessAbility say they see plenty of job opportunities for disabled and other challenged job-seekers. What worries them is the shortage of those job-seekers coming into the system. For every person they put to work, they say there more who are waiting in line or who have simply given up on joining the mainstream economy.

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