Economic Productivity of the EIDP Participants

2230 jobs held in the first 8 quarters
2.2 average jobs per worker
$4.7 million in earnings
$4,894 average earnings per worker
820,293 total hours were worked
832 average number of hours worked per worker

Transcript

Let’s look at some of the key employment outcomes and the factors that were associated with vocational success. First, we will review information on productivity of all participants in the EIDP, both those in the experimental as well as comparison conditions. Participants held over 2200 jobs, and made over 4 and a half million dollars, averaging close to $5000 per worker. They worked hundreds of thousands of hours, averaging over 800 hours per employed participant. These results show us the tremendous economic productivity of individuals with psychiatric disabilities; and how they make a significant contribution to our country’s gross national product that can’t be ignored.

Here are some additional features of the jobs held by participants of the study. Eighty six percent of all jobs were at minimum wage or above with only 14% paying below minimum wage. The average hourly wage was $5.91,which is very close to minimum wage. Most participants did not work full time averaging around 20 hours of paid work per week. Only 17% of all jobs held were full time or 35 or more hours per week, which is the Department of Labor’s definition of full time employment. One third of the full time employment included benefits (e.g: sick leave, vacation, and health insurance. Finally, combining all participants in the control and experimental groups on average, clients took 6 and ½ months to obtain their first job.

A key finding of the EIDP study was that the longer clients stayed in the program, the more likely they were to work. Only 30% of those who received services for 3 months worked at any time during those three months, while this proportion rose to over half once people had received services for 12 months, and almost three-quarters, once they were served for 24 months.
The national employment rate for people with severe disabilities in 1994/95 was 26% as reported by the Survey of Income and Program Participation, US Bureau of the Census. This national employment rate is defined in the same way as the EIDP employment figure for 12 months, which is employment that involves working for pay in the past year. When we compare these two rates, we can see that those in the EIDP were twice as likely to work, as compared to those in the general population of people with severe disabilities during roughly the same time period.