Autism and Employment (revised)

(I made a post about this a while ago, but things have changed since then, and so now I want to post about it again, this time along with a post on instagram!)

I want to start this by saying the topic of employment is one I’m very passionate about. Not because it genuinely interests me, but because I felt like I went through hell and back with it, and I believe the mental health consequences specifically of unemployment and job seeking needs to be addressed more. For everyone, not just autistic people, job seeking is an awful experience. I wish I didn't have to be so invested in the topic of employment, but unfortunately this world is run on a capitalist system that keeps us working in order to survive. People need to work to stay afloat, so unfortunately, it is a pressing issue.

But of course, for autistic people, we have added barriers that make it all a little more difficult.

In the UK, about 3 in 10 autistic people are in some form of employment. In comparison, 5 in 10 of disabled people are in employment, and 8 in 10 for non disabled people.

Autistic people also face the largest pay gap amongst disabled groups. They recieve ⅓ less than non-disabled employees on average.

Autistic graduates are 2x more likely to be unemployed after 15 months post graduation, than non-autistic graduates. Only 36% of autistic graduates are able to find full time employment in this time.

This information comes from The Buckland Review of Autism Employment: Report and Recommendations, published in february 2024 by the Department for Work and Pensions. I could make a whole post parroting what is said in that review, but I just recommend you go and read it yourself. It’s available on the uk government website, or if you cannot access that, there is a summary on the National Autistic Society’s website.

But that review makes it clear, there is a big issue with autism and employment in this society.

There are many reasons why autistic people can struggle with employment, but it can be broken down into two broader reasons:

1. getting through the employment process itself (more on that here)

2. surviving in the job environment.

And what's frustrating is that if things could just be changed, and society be more accepting of autistic people, these things wouldn’t be such strong barriers.

I was lucky enough to just about fit into that 36% statistic. After graduating, it took me just under a year to get my first (ever) job. It felt like a lifetime, and it felt like it would never end, but I did get there eventually. And it was a full time job.

But before that point, in the time between finishing uni and gettin that first job, the rate of shutdowns I was having was very frequent, and I ended up in a state of depression (maybe burnout?) that got worse the longer it went on for. I felt like a waste of space, a failure. And I was exhausted from bending over backwards to the will of employers in desperation to get a job just so my mother and the universal credit people would stop screaming at me constantly to “keep applying”.

Universal Credit is a benefit here in the UK in which you basically get a specific amount of money a month that is calculated based off your circumstances. While on Universal Credit, you are required to have regular appointments with a careers advisor at Job Centre Plus, so they can "help" you find employment, or navigate whatever situation you're in if you can't work for whatever reason, or are trying to start your own company.

But in my opinion, the "help" I recieved from the people at the Job Centre was shabby. They did basically nothing to help me, they just required that I apply to a certain number of jobs a week, and I had to log each application to prove to them that I was applying to jobs. If I didn't do this, they would reduce my monthly pay as punishment. They didn't give much advice, beyond glancing at my CV once. And while I was in this deep depression or burnout, they did absolutely nothing to attempt to support me through it. Despite the fact that 72% of job seekers report poorer mental health while seeking. That includes non-autistic people.

Job searching is harmful to everyone, so why is there 0 mental health support offered? Instead, we're just further pressured, week after week to keep applying to jobs we know we don't want just for the sake of appeasing the job centre overlords.

It wasn't until much later down the line when I was referred to a different employment company through the Universal Credit "restart" scheme, that I finally had support offered to me.

I remember frequently seeing autistic people on tiktok and the like, lamenting about how they struggled to survive in the working environment. At the time (before my first job), I almost felt a sort of resentment towards them. I sat here wondering how on earth they were able to even get the jobs in the first place, because I, for the life of me, couldn’t.

At least, that’s what it felt like. But again, I fit into that 36% statistic. By all accounts, I did get a job in good time, but it didn’t feel like that. Because all the nagging and whining from those around me (mainly my mother) made me feel like I should have had a job years ago.

And in some ways that's true, because I watched as other people around me got standard part-time jobs at college, at uni, and I couldn’t get anywhere with it. It made me feel awful and like a failure that I couldn’t even get a part-time job at a Sainsbury’s or something.

That being said, I didn’t try all that hard, because I was busy with uni work, and also this was during/at the tail end of covid, so it almost didn’t feel worth trying.

And I think I always struggled with the demand of applying to jobs. It felt like a huge demand, meaning I didn’t want to do it. And plus, the looming threat of a possible interview didn’t help either. I knew interviews would never be my thing. Talking face to face with a complete stranger, expected to comply to all the weird social niceties, expected to seem confident and outgoing, the complete opposite of who I am fundamentally as a person.

But once uni was done, I had no choice but to get a job, so then I was forced to apply to any and every job I saw. And yeah, that was hell.

Interviews are the worst thing on the planet. I hate them with a burning, visceral passion. Words cannot describe how much I hate them.

I have to mask as much as physically possible, come off as likeable, conform to all these social rules that aren’t really used in general life but are reserved specifically for corporate situations. I have to say exactly the right things in exactly the right way in order to get them to like me enough for them to consider employing me.

I think to a lot of employers I come across as too nervous or shy, and especially when I was applying for those standard part time customer service roles, I clearly came across like I’d be terrible at it, because I spoke in a quiet mousy voice (despite trying my best to speak normally at a normal volume), because I couldn’t make eye contact with them a normal amount. Because I answered their questions with short answers, shorter than they expected or wanted.

I had no shot, basically.

And doing that several times a week was exhausting and hellish.

And so even though I was lucky enough to win over this one start up company, the time leading up to that success, was long, painful, and just awful in ways I cannot put into words.

But then, after all that effort I put in, after going through that deep depression, I finally got my first job. It didn’t last long, however. And this wasn’t even my fault. Let this be a lesson to recent graduates and job seekers - be wary of accepting jobs from start-up companies. Because you may just lose your job 3 months later. I talked about this in some more detail in my last post about employment, because I wrote that just after it had all happened.

Even when I was still at that job, I did struggle. A part of me is glad it ended, because I don’t know if I would have survived or not. (And it also means that I’m able to have the job I currently have, which is much better for me.)

I remember forcing myself to wake up early in the morning, feeling a heavy sense of dread weighing on my chest. Every single morning.

I remember getting to 3pm and feeling done with it all, barely lasting the next two hours to 5pm.

I remember watching the company crumble to pieces, as we lost the office we had, lost subscriptions to websites I needed to do my job properly. I saw it all crumbling around me yet I felt trapped in it because quitting at that point meant going back to the even bigger hell that was job searching. So I just clung onto hope that maybe the company would find it's feet and get back on track again.

It didn't.

The rate of shutdowns I had in that time skyrocketed, it was nearly every day at that point. That job pretty much ruined me lol. Still hate the CEO with a passion. I hope for the good of everyone that he never attempts to make another company again, because it will crash and burn.

Once I was kicked out of my first full time job, I had to go back to the hell that was job searching. Fortunately, I stayed on Universal Credit through it all, so I still got paid from them, when my own job couldn't pay me a dime. Apparently by that point I had been on Universal Credit for long enough that they wanted to bump me up from standard job centre “help”, to their “restart” scheme, where I was referred to another organisation to help with employment.

Let me tell you, the difference in support between the Job Centre and this place, was stark. For the first time, I felt like I was actually being supported. I felt like the people there understood. I felt like I could actually be supported into a career I wanted to be in rather than just being forced to get any job available.

If only I’d had that type of support from the get go, maybe things wouldn’t have felt so awful.

And I have to say here, I think I did win the postcode lottery a bit, because from searching online it looks like a lot of people have had just as negative experiences with the restart scheme as they did with the job centre. I'm very glad I did have a positive experience.

But anyway, to the point - one piece of advice I was told there, was that a large majority of the job market is actually hidden. It’s not on job boards or at job fairs, it’s hidden because they’re jobs that are offered through connections.

This, at the time, made me feel a sense of dread drop in my stomach because, how on earth is an autistic person supposed to make such connections?

Funnily enough, my current job was given to me thanks to connections. These connections can appear in the most unlikely places!

But I think this is likely a fairly large player in the many factors that can limit autistic people from being able to get a job. We can’t form the same connections that other people do. It’s hard enough for us to make friends outside of employment situations, but how are we supposed to make connections within this confusing corporate world?

That, along with interviews, along with all the other confusion that comes with the vagueness of corporate language can all make for a hard time in trying to find comfortable employment.

But staying in employment is also very difficult for autistic people.

In my situation, I never had to quit a job or was fired because of being autistic. I lost my first job to the company colapsing, and my second job was just a temporary contract that ended at christmas.

My current job i’ve had since january, and I don’t forsee it ending in the near future, at least. But as i’ve said many times, I got incredibly lucky with this job. I’m very happy with the current amount of hours I work, and I get to work those hours whenever I want to, to fit around my previously existing schedule.

But again, had I been able to stay at my first job, working full time, in an office 3 days a week, commuting to and from, waking up earlier than my body can handle... I don’t know how long it truly would have lasted. I don’t know if i would have reached a breaking point. It’s not impossible.

And now I can understand those who express their struggles in staying in jobs, and I feel less resentment towards them, now that i’m not stuck in the purgatory of job seeking.

I have friends who cannot work, not because they can’t get employed, but because they simply would not survive a day in the employment environment.

And I also know that these friends feel just as awful about not being able to work a job as I did back when I was struggling to get one. They feel just as unfullfilled and like a faliure as I did.

Which why it bothers me so much when people act like those who can’t work, are just saying so to be lazy and get away with not working, and that they’re “stealing money from the government” or whatever.

These people don’t want to be out of employment. They want to be able to work so they wouldn’t have to feel the shame of not being able to. So they can feel fulfilled in life.

But maybe if these friends of mine could have more support in the process of finding employment, to take some of the weight of it off their shoulders, to find a working arrangement that works for them and their brain, that helps them to earn the money they need to survive and feel fulfilled without having to have daily meltdowns and fall into fatal depression, if they could have that support, they wouldn’t have to be “stealing taxpayers money”.

I wish so desperately that there was more support out there for everyone struggling to get a job or struggling to work. Because no one deserves to be stuck in that state of feeling worthless and unfulfilled.

I wish I could sit here and make a post with all the answers, giving away the best advice to guarantee you an easy way into getting a job, but I can’t. There is no advice I can give. There is nothing I can really say here that will help, other than I get it. I understand. I’ve been through it.

And even though I’m not in it anymore, it’s left its indent in me; I will never forget how it felt to be stuck in that state, and that’s why I will always be passionate about that topic and try to offer as much support as I can, but I am not qualified in supporting employment, so all I can really do is offer my sympathies.

I really hope that more supports can be built in the future for not just autistic people, but for anyone struggling with employment, because no one deserves to be left at rock bottom in that situation.