Pennsylvania Made Strong Progress Last Year in Employing Workers with Disabilities

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While it landed in the middle of the employment rate list, Pennsylvania has made great progress in employing workers with disabilities over the last year.

While Pennsylvania still lags in the rate of employment of workers with disabilities, it made the largest step forward in the country in this important area last year, writes Grace Donnelly for Fortune.

The advocacy group RespectAbility released the 2016 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium in time for the 2017 National Governors Association Winter Meeting.

However, while there were improvements, it showed that employment of workers with disabilities has still not reached pre-recession levels.

Some states are doing much better than others in employing people with disabilities. Wyoming has the highest rate with 57.1 percent and West Virginia the lowest at 25.4. Pennsylvania is in 25th at 35.7 percent.

However, the Keystone State is already working on rectifying these numbers, and has made finding jobs for people with disabilities a vital part of its workforce development strategies. As a result, Pennsylvania helped bring 13,187 disabled individuals into the workforce last year, by far the largest number of any state.

“People with disabilities deserve the opportunity to earn an income and achieve independence, just like anyone else,” said RespectAbility president Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi.

Read more about the research in Fortune by clicking here.

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