Mayor’s office career center is tackling unemployment, underemployment in the disability community
Walking into the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Career Center on a rainy weekday afternoon on the Near West Side from an adjacent parking lot requires fewer steps than you would imagine.
That brings to mind what career counselor Carly Englander says: “The disability population is the only marginalized group that anyone can join at any point in time,” she said. “You can be born with a disability, but you could also become injured later on in life and become disabled, so the idea of universal design, making something that fits everyone — making a space wheelchair accessible is nice.”
October marks National Disability Employment Awareness Month, a time when the contributions of America’s workers with disabilities are celebrated, and inclusive employment practices that benefit employers and employees are highlighted. But 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that across all age groups, people with a disability were much less likely to be employed than those with no disability, and the unemployment rate for people with a disability was about twice as high as the rate for those without a disability.
The MOPD career center opened in 2022 on the anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, which was signed July 26, 1990. It focuses on providing individualized services and supports for Chicago residents with disabilities, including resources, training, mentorship and assistance with job seeking and interviewing to help clients find and retain meaningful career opportunities. With locations at City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., and at 2102 W. Ogden Ave., the city is trying to meet those in need where they are.
“People with disabilities earn on tap less … in the workforce,” said Rachel Arfa, commissioner for the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. “Many people with disabilities continue to be passed over because of bias or assumptions or discrimination simply because of their disability.”
The $1.2 million career center houses computers with assistive technology and has private offices for five career counselors, a benefits counselor and an ASL interpreter. Since opening, over 200 people have been helped, according to Career Center Program Director Lauren Hooberman.
“We didn’t have this center before the pandemic, but that was part of the push to open it,” she said. “We knew that the pandemic was creating more jobs than in service industries, where historically people with disabilities have filled those roles before. The commissioner was getting calls from business owners asking her for people, where do I hire people with disabilities.”
Englander said career center clients must be over age 16, be Chicago residents, identify as having a disability and be actively looking for work.
Hooberman said the career center also does disability awareness training for employers who request it.
“Something that always comes out, whenever we have a disability awareness training, is accommodations benefit everybody,” she said.
Three jobseekers who used MOPD described their journey to gainful employment to the Tribune.
Alexis Smith, an Edgewater resident with cerebral palsy, works two part-time jobs in the theater industry, one as a box office associate with the iO Theater and the other as an usher for Broadway in Chicago. She has articulated needing accommodations to read her work schedule, get restroom breaks and find transportation, given the size of her motorized wheelchair. She has to juggle that with her caregivers’ schedules.
Sutton Rettig is another Edgewater resident with cerebral palsy who has a full-time job as an administrative coordinator with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. He supplements his income by selling photographs on Etsy. He’s screenwriting his first TV pilot that centers on disability in the 21st century with writing partner Brian Kettler.
Pedro Chavez, a Humboldt Park resident is looking for employment. He endured a stabbing a couple of years ago and now has difficulty speaking and using his right arm. Prior to the injury, he worked manufacturing jobs. But it’s now difficult to work in a job that requires speed and the ability to lift things.
While Chavez’s dream job would be working the movable bridges over the Chicago River, Rettig dreams of being a full-time screenwriter. He and his writing partner in Portland, Oregon, are hoping to take their pilot on the festival circuit soon.
Smith wants a full-time job she can do from home in the public relations and communication field. All three of them say they’ve had to educate employers on accessibility issues and enlighten those who think they’re aware of the concerns of those with disabilities, but aren’t fully aware.
The trio shared some of their employment struggles. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Tell us your journey in looking for work, and what you want to do.
Smith: I hadn’t worked in about a year and two months before I came to MOPD, so I was very nervous. And I was actually very anxious because I was a new graduate with a bachelor’s in communications. I have great communication skills, customer service skills. I just want to learn things, and I want to be active in the industry. We got my résumé improved ... making sure I used the appropriate words that employers look for. When jobs didn’t call me back based on a lack of experience, (counselor) Johanna McMahon would encourage me to keep going. I’d get an interview, but then people will say, “Alexis, I’m sorry. We’re not wheelchair accessible.” ...
Taking more of an independent initiative, I went on Facebook, and an acquaintance was offering a position at the Improv Olympic Theatre for box office associates. I sent my résumé. And two weeks later, I got an email offering me an interview and I took it. I have history with iO, because I used to perform there as a student improviser, so I like the idea of being able to help patrons get their tickets, and with customer service, I’m still able to use the phone and answer all the questions that they’re asking about seating and ticket pricing. I work there on Fridays and Saturdays and in addition to being a box office associate, I’m also an usher at Broadway in Chicago. I work there five days a week. I work two part-time jobs.
I learned once you get a job, no matter what it is, tell your employer right off the bat that you need accommodations and say what they are. Because of my limitations, I am going to take longer breaks to be in the ladies room. There’s personal reasons why I need my book bag with me, even though other employees aren’t supposed to have them. I’ve learned to advocate for myself. …
My goal is to get off SSI (Supplemental Security Income) for good. ... My dream job would be to work from home as a public relations specialist at either Lurie Children’s Hospital or the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
Q: With so many jobs, do you guys have any free time?
Smith: No, not really. If I really miss my family, I will tell both jobs I want someone else to cover my shift. I’m thankful that I have those types of jobs. But I do want another job. Employers, they try to be accommodating but then in other words, they’re not trying to be accommodating because a few weeks into the usher job, I got in trouble for going to the bathroom too close to intermission, messing up the line with patrons for the bathroom. I’m thinking, I don’t know exactly when I have to go to the bathroom. And it takes me longer to get situated and do my thing in the ladies room.
Q: So people think they’re aware of disability concerns. But they’re telling you what you should do, when in reality you know what you need to do. They just have to give you time to do it?
Smith: Exactly.
Rettig: And that makes you feel guilty, too. Because you are repressing your emotions. We kind of live on this thought that we’re just grateful to have a job to begin with and we’re just trying not to burden our parents or burden our bosses or what have you. So any little nuance that inconveniences your employer, you just kind of have the thought to push (the concern) down. ... Don’t take abuse, but also you feel like “don’t rock the boat.”
Q: What would you like employers to know about disability?
Smith: I want them to know, regardless of our limitations, we are there to work and we’re eager, and we’re at work mostly on time. It’s not that you’re treating us any different when you provide accommodations. ... It doesn’t mean that we’re dumb. It doesn’t mean that we’re slow. We just need to do things in an orderly fashion so that we don’t get hurt or there’s extra steps. I was telling my boss: All my other co-workers, they probably don’t have to worry about getting a cab and calling them ahead of time. If they miss a bus, hopefully they can catch the next one, right on the back, the same thing with the train. Or if they miss an Uber or it’s too much money, they could possibly get somebody to pick them up and that person won’t charge them or they walk. But I can’t walk, depending on if I’ve never been in that area before where I’m working because I’m new to it or if I don’t know which way I’m going because I’m directionally challenged. And taking the bus, I need repetition before I go anywhere, because I’m easy to forget. So I travel by reading the names of the streets, but if I’m not familiar with the area, I can’t tell whether this street is first or second. And then I also have to look at landmarks. Is there a store nearby? So I know this is the stop where you get off. I don’t want, nor do I need, to apologize for who I am. I have nothing to be embarrassed about.
Chavez: Be patient. Because we are trying to do the most and we are people. I actually like being like this because I’ve learned how to not waste time and I cherish it now. I think most people are good; they take that for granted. So just be patient and be understanding.
Rettig: Whether they know it or not, employers are humbling a demographic that doesn’t need humbling. We go and do these interviews, these jobs with counseling or job coaching, with so many extra steps that we’re doing for cognitive transition, physical accommodations, what have you. And rightfully so, they’re expecting you to execute your duties, but there’s an underlying sense that we have some kind of entitlement because we’re hoping they just adapt to us, when we’re working twice as hard just to make our transition as effective as an able-bodied co-worker.
Q: You feel as a person with a disability, you have to be 10 times better than an able-bodied person due to gratitude?
Rettig: Yeah. There’s companies that are looking at diversity, equity and inclusion and that’s a bit more inclusive, but there’s such a double standard to that because how would they measure that? Are you inclusive for physical abilities? It’s such a gray line to measure because what are your qualifications for someone with cerebral palsy compared to somebody with ADHD? We all do HR training once a year for whatever. But the scope of inclusion has become, in my opinion, too compact, you’re isolated into this pigeonhole where doing a few puzzle pieces of a cultural diversity index qualifies you as this huge pioneer of inclusion. But you have to walk the walk.
