Employment of autistic people

[21] The gradual inclusion of autism in the field of disability at international level is reflected in the Council of Europe directive of 27 November 2000, advocating "non-discrimination in employment and occupation", which applies to autistic workers.

[27] Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist who discovered infantile autism, followed the progress of the eleven children (generally from privileged backgrounds) he diagnosed for the publication of his landmark study in 1943.

[48] Meticulon in Canada, Auticon in Germany, and Asperger Syndrome Training Employment Partnership Entreprise in the USA, use job coaching with a single referent for the autistic employee.

[44][52] In 2012, two Mossad agents launched the Ro'im Rachok project, an Israeli army intelligence unit that specifically recruits autistic teenagers to analyze aerial and satellite photographs.

The dominant, and indeed almost unique, statistical norm in this field is the alternation of phases of greater or lesser inclusion, of various types of precariousness, with multiple interruptions of the pathway and long periods without a solution.

[12] The specific conditions that have enabled a certain number of autistic people to gain access to employment, and even to valued career paths (the possibility of co-optation, for example in research, the lesser weight of previous experience, etc.)

[64] According to Tibor N. Farkas and his colleagues, hiring and keeping a job are the main challenges associated with integrating autistic people into the workplace, due to their communication and social skills deficits.

[18][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] Overall, they are paid less than their non-autistic peers (whether due to a lower number of hours or a difference in the amount of pay for an equivalent position),[68][73][67] work below their actual level of qualification or skills,[18][67] and suffer more discrimination.

[78] Dawn Hendricks[81] and British psychology professor Patricia Howlin,[82] among others, have shown that prospects for young autistic school leavers are very limited, both in comparison with the general population and with adults with other developmental disorders.

[85] According to a review of the scientific literature by researchers Alissa Levy and Adrienne Perry, published in 2011, an average of 24% of autistic people find employment during their lifetime, usually on a discontinuous and/or part-time basis.

[93] However, a more recent study (2018) based on the follow-up of a Utah cohort since the 1980s, tends to invalidate the relationship between IQ score and employment rate, and to conclude that lack of mastery of social skills is the main factor in unemployment.

[100] The financial compensation granted to people with disabilities, depending on the rules of the country concerned and the type of benefit, may require that a ceiling of resources not be exceeded:[101] as a result, a number of adults with autism work in voluntary jobs.

[79] Computer science and language learning are two common interests of adults in mainstream settings, and are complemented by a wide range of activities in fields such as psychology, music, accountancy, drawing, geography, law, photography, cooking[79] and mathematics.

[128] The ideal job is in a field requiring few social skills, allowing time for learning, involving a reduced amount of sensory stimulation,[129] and in which the tasks to be accomplished are clearly defined.

[139] The arts and crafts professions, which "have in common the need for high precision of gesture and great patience in often solitary work", also attract a significant proportion of autistic people, without requiring "advanced social or verbal skills".

Grandin, for example, advises against jobs in political science, commerce and positions involving regular use of the telephone, because of the problems of sensory overload and over-solicitation of social skills.

[153] The frequent refusal of autistic adults to communicate about their autism in the workplace leads to a lack of support and awareness measures, as well as misinterpretation of their behavior, resulting in integration failures.

[169][170][171][172][173][174][175] According to the Malakoff Médéric survey, job interview "appears to be a highly discriminating barrier for an autistic person who does not play well the social comedy attached to this rite of passage.

[176] More specifically, autistic candidates are "perceived as having a more monotonous tone of voice, being less composed and focused, and displaying less natural eye contact and gestures than their non-autistic counterparts, and received lower ratings for likelihood of social approach".

In the general population, motivating factors at work are based on salary and bonuses, the prospect of promotion supported by the symbolism of power, and social benefits in terms of leisure and festive encounters.

[33] The Malakoff Médéric Foundation notes that:The employment of people with cognitive disabilities [...] has until now focused on activities that are particularly unrecognized, repetitive, with little economic potential, and no prospect of personal or professional advancement.

[206] Employers and human resources managers generally fail to recognize that they are discriminating when they judge autistic people on their social skills, and justify their non-employment on the grounds of the severity of their disability.

[209] Specific adaptations for autistic people are often refused,[111] such as an individual desk rather than an open-plan layout, keeping office doors closed, or moving away from an elevator, on the grounds that "everyone has to make an effort".

[212] A frequent problem is the gradual slackening of integration efforts after hiring, or the view that autistic people who are able to compensate for their disability at work do not need adaptations over time.

[213] There have been reports of autistic workers being exploited by malicious colleagues or employers, as a result of their frequent naivety when it comes to human relations, particularly in the early years of adulthood.

[214] Josef Schovanec's report gives an estimate of around a third of unpaid work, in defiance of legal obligations, with autistic people notoriously reluctant to complain or threaten the companies in question.

[226] To encourage hiring and the retention of people with autism spectrum disorder in employment, according to a Swiss Social Security survey (2015), the main lever is the creation of vocational guidance and training measures tailored to their specific needs.

[252] Numerous testimonies report the damaging use of pseudoscientific methods or vectors of sectarian aberrations in the field of business coaching, such as divinatory tarot, neuro-linguistic programming and transactional analysis.

[253][254] On 11 November 2012, the NGO Autism Rights Watch alerted MIVILUDES to the development of coaching in the healthcare field, and the persistence of unverified psychoanalytical theories targeting autistic people in France.

[262] The Malakoff Médéric foundation cites raising team awareness, adapting working hours and taking sensory aspects into account as three elements necessary for successful integration.