Creating Opportunity through Workforce Development Innovation

Abstract

A growing number of individuals with autism are graduating from high school and university to find a lack of reliable resources dedicated to assisting the transition from education to the world of work. This Generation A, with a population of 1.5 million people, will age into the workforce over the next decade. Despite federal-state programs, dedicated nonprofits, and highly publicized corporate hiring initiatives, the unemployment rate for individuals with autism remains above the national average. Corporations have started to recognize the untapped potential of the neurodivergent worker but struggled with sourcing talent and failed to develop practicable pipeline models across various industries that are open-sourced, easily replicated, scalable, and financially sustainable. A review of methods, programs, and paradigms that exist amid current statistics reveals the imperative for innovative ideas that can be executed by multiple stakeholders to affect both the work seekers and the job creators. A systems approach to developing talent pipelines is investigated as one possible solution as well as other new expeditions and collaborative, open-sourced concepts that hold promising statistics and anecdotal data about what could be the next iteration of workforce development in an increasingly neurodivergent world.

Citation

Timko, M. (2022), "Creating Opportunity through Workforce Development Innovation", Giannantonio, C.M. and Hurley-Hanson, A.E. (Ed.) Generation A (Emerald Studies in Workplace Neurodiversity), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-150. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-256-020211008