Upcoming research conference on employment for people with disabilities

Innovative Research on Employer Practices: Improving Employment for People with Disabilities is a two-day event (October 22nd–23rd) to be held in Washington, D.C. that will highlight the research findings from the Employer Practices Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (EP-RRTC) at Cornell University ILR School's Employment and Disability Institute. Professor Kevin F. Hallock, ICS Director, and Linda Barrington, ICS Executive Director, will participate in conference sessions focused on compensation and workplace practice research.

Hallock, with Ph.D. candidate Xin Jin, will present two different research studies. Using the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET database, Hallock and Jin consider characteristics of jobs that are more likely associated with persons with disabilities and their non-disabled peers, whether persons with disabilities are in different kinds of jobs and how 'in demand' specific job types are, and whether persons with disabilities are over- or under-represented in the fastest growing jobs. In their second study, "Analysis of Wage and Total Compensation Gaps by Disability Measure," Hallock and Jin link several comprehensive national demographic surveys by occupation to rich occupation-level data on benefits. They then construct a careful measure of total compensation to explore the pay gaps between workers with disabilities and their non-disabled peers, where pay includes more than just salary or wage compensation.

Barrington, along with Susanne Bruyère, Director of the Employment and Disabilities Institute, will review the learnings from multiple employer convenings that were used to inform and pressure test several of the EP-RRTC research projects. Because employers are the linchpin to improving work outcomes for people with disabilities, employer representatives will join Barrington's and Bruyère's opening conference session to discuss the challenges and opportunities they experience in working to recruit, retain and advance people with disabilities.

For more see: http://www.epstateofthescience.org/agenda.cfm

See also Kevin Hallock's upcoming October workspan column (to be posted October 7, 2013).

This state of the science conference and research is funded to Cornell University by the U.S. Department of Education National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) for a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Employer Practices Related to Employment Outcomes among Individuals with Disabilities (grant #H133B100017). The contents of this conference do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government (Edgar, 75.620 (b)).