The COVID-19 pandemic continued to roil the U.S. labor market in 2021, but one group of workers has likely benefitted from the unprecedented disruption: people with disabilities.

To find out why employment levels among people with disabilities have remained stuck at less than 40% in recent decades and identify best practices among employers, Heinemann and a team of researchers conducted an online cross-sectional survey of almost 350 people with disabilities in the Chicago area. The vast majority of them, 270, were employed.