4. Patterns and Convergence of Unemployment Rate among People with Disabilities: Testing the “Law of One Unemployment Rate”

This empirically oriented chapter examines the patterns and convergence of the unemployment rates for people with disabilities and other demographic groups. It uses the data on monthly unemployment rates in the United States. Five types of unit root tests were performed, namely, the ADF test, the FADF test, the FADF–SB test, SUR–FADF and the YOFA test. In addition, four types of fractional integration tests were done, namely, the GPH test, the R–FI test, the AY–FI test and the YOFA–FI test. The empirical findings on the unemployment rates indicated that there was no major differences in the patterns of the unemployment rates for people with disabilities and other demographic groups. Furthermore, the empirical findings on the convergence of the unemployment rates for various demographic groups revealed that there was no convergence in the unemployment rates between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. More importantly, the structural break in the unemployment rate for people with disabilities took place earlier compared to the structural break in the total unemployment. This result confirms the “first-to-be-fired” tendency in employment of people with disabilities. The findings also indicated that the predicted value of the unemployment rate for people with disabilities decreased slower than the total unemployment. This fact confirms the “last-to-be-hired” tendency in employment of people with disabilities.