Line chart showing disability employment declining from 38.4% in January 2026 to 38.1% in February 2026, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, with note on a 0.3 percentage point drop.
Disability employment just dropped.
From 38.4% to 38.1% in one month.
That change represents hundreds of thousands of people losing ground in a single month, according to the latest nTIDE report from the Kessler Foundation based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
On paper, it looks small, just a fraction of a percentage point. In practice, it reflects movement in the wrong direction at the same time LinkedIn is full of companies talking about their commitment to inclusion.
For those of us who have been living in this space for a while, it feels predictable. This is what it looks like when inclusion is treated as messaging instead of something structural.
We get hired, and for a moment it looks like progress. Once we are inside the role, the reality starts to narrow. Job requirements that never quite made sense begin to matter, accommodations that were described as straightforward turn into drawn-out processes, and support that was implied becomes something that has to be justified repeatedly.
Over time, the system finds it easier to question us than to examine whether the environment was ever set up for success in the first place.
That is the part that does not show up in the celebration posts. It is also the part that explains the numbers. When people cannot get in, cannot stay, or cannot grow, the math does not hold.
Inclusion only works when you mean it. It does not work as a campaign or a metric. It works when leadership and infrastructure actually shift to support the people brought into the organization.
Right now, many organizations have not made that shift, and the data is reflecting that in real time. We feel it at every stage, when applications go unanswered, when more energy is spent fighting for access than doing the job itself, and when strong performance still leads nowhere.
We can continue to celebrate progress, but the numbers are telling a different story.
If inclusion begins to fall apart the moment it becomes inconvenient, what exactly are we building?