A Quiet Record Was Just Broken, and It’s Good News for Your Family

If you’ve spent years being handed bad news about your loved one’s prospects, the waitlists, the “we’ll see,” the low expectations dressed up as caution.

You’ve earned the right to be skeptical of anyone bearing good news.

So we’ll just show you the numbers, and you can decide what to do with them.

At the end of 2025, employment for working-age people with disabilities in this country reached an all-time high.

Not a recovery. Not a rebound. A record.

We think you should know about it, because it changes the frame around a question that probably keeps you up at night:

Is there really a place in the working world for my child?

What Actually Happened

The National Trends in Disability Employment report, issued monthly by the Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability, found that employment outcomes for working-aged people with disabilities reached all-time highs in November and December 2025.

Researchers described it as a possible push past a plateau that had held since mid-2023.

Meaning the trend didn’t just tick up; it may have broken through a ceiling.

This isn’t a one-month fluke, either. Zoom out and the direction is unmistakable.

The employment-population ratio for people with a disability hit its highest recorded level since data collection began in 2008, and it has kept climbing since.

A big driver, according to researchers, is the staying power of flexible and remote work: arrangements that removed barriers that used to shut capable people out of the workforce entirely.

Why This Matters More Than a Headline

Here’s what a record like this really means, translated out of economist-speak and into the language of your kitchen table.

For most of modern history, the working world was built on a single assumption: show up, in person, on someone else’s schedule, in someone else’s building, or don’t work at all.

For a lot of people with developmental and physical disabilities, that assumption was the whole barrier.

Not ability. Not willingness.

Just a rigid box that didn’t bend.

That box is bending now.

Flexible schedules, remote roles, job carving, supported employment: the world is slowly discovering what you already knew.

Your loved one has something to offer when the environment is built to let them offer it.

We want to be straight with you, because you deserve honesty over hype.

In 2025, still only 22.8% of people with a disability were employed, and the unemployment rate for disabled workers rose to 8.3%, well above the rate for everyone else.

The gap is real and it is wide.

But “record high” and “still not enough” are both true at the same time.

The line is moving in the right direction, and your family is not too late to be part of it.

What You Can Do to Ride the Trend

A national record doesn’t do anything for your loved one on its own.

Turning it into a real opportunity happens locally, and it happens through preparation. Here’s where to focus.

• Build for flexibility. The doors opening are largely flexible and remote ones. If your loved one is comfortable with a computer, a routine, a defined set of tasks, those are exactly the muscles worth strengthening now.
• Ask about supported employment through your DD Waiver. Virginia’s Developmental Disability Waivers, Medicaid programs that fund home- and community-based support, can cover supported employment and community engagement services. Start the conversation with your local Community Services Board (CSB), the front door to these programs in Virginia.
• Connect with Virginia’s vocational rehabilitation system. The Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) helps Virginians with disabilities prepare for, find, and keep employment. It’s a public resource your family has already paid for, so use it.
• Reframe “job readiness” as “life readiness.” Managing a schedule, communicating a need, finishing a task, adapting to change: these aren’t separate from independence. They are independence, and they’re what employers are increasingly built to accommodate.
• Watch for October. National Disability Employment Awareness Month arrives every October and brings a wave of local hiring events, employer commitments, and resources. It’s a natural moment to test the waters, worth marking on your calendar now.

The Long Game, and Why We’re in It With You

For the family caring for an aging parent’s adult child, for the parent who lies awake doing the math on “what happens after me,” a rising employment trend is more than an economic statistic.

It’s a crack of light under a door you’ve been staring at for years.

At Community Direct Services, we’ve spent almost two decades helping Hampton Roads families walk toward futures that once felt out of reach.

We see the person first, never just the diagnosis, and we build on what’s strong, not just what’s hard.

Two of our guiding principles speak directly to this moment: Talents and Gifts, creating real opportunities for people to share their abilities, and Self-Direction, promoting informed choice and control over one’s own life.

Our Personal Assistance and Supportive In-Home services are designed to build the everyday, real-world skills (routine, communication, community access) that turn a hopeful trend into your loved one’s actual life.

The world is finally catching up to something you never doubted: that your loved one belongs in it, contributing, valued, seen.

We’d be honored to help you prepare them for the door that’s opening.

Community Direct Services, Inc. 📞 (757) 965-4899 📧 info@cdsva.com 🌐 communitydirectservices.com
5705 Thurston Ave., Virginia Beach, VA 23455 🕐 Monday–Friday, 9:30am–4:30pm

Sources & Resources

• Employment of People with Disabilities Reaches All-Time Highs at End of 2025. Kessler Foundation / nTIDE: https://kesslerfoundation.org/press-release/employment-people-disabilities-reaches-all-time-highs-end-2025
• nTIDE January 2026 report coverage. Southeast ADA Center: https://adasoutheast.org/employment-of-people-with-disabilities-reaches-all-time-highs-at-end-of-2025/
• People with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics, 2025. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/disabl_03032026.pdf
• People with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics, 2023 (series-high context). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/disabl_02222024.pdf
• Developmental Disability (DD) Waivers. Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS): https://www.dmas.virginia.gov/for-members/benefits-and-services/waivers/developmental-disability-dd-waivers/
• Vocational Rehabilitation. Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS): https://www.vadars.org/
• National Disability Employment Awareness Month. U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/initiatives/ndeam
• Community Direct Services, Our Services: https://communitydirectservices.com/our-services/