Employers’ Perspectives about Employing People with Disabilities

Abstract

A comparison of managerial hiring intentions and attitudes toward people with disabilities between service businesses and goods-producing industries found that service firms are more likely to recruit people with disabilities. Based on a comparison of 263 leisure and hospitality companies with 3,126 firms in other industries, service-producing industries are more likely to actively recruit workers with disabilities when compared with goods-producing companies. Customer attitudes toward people with disabilities seem to be a bigger concern among leisure and hospitality companies compared with other service-producing industries. With respect to coworker attitudes, companies in the manufacturing and transportation/warehousing industries are the most likely to report coworker attitudes as a challenge when hiring people with disabilities. Finally, leisure and hospitality companies are more likely to report that the cost of accommodations is an issue when hiring people with disabilities. At the same time, leisure and hospitality businesses are less likely than goods-producing industries to report that the nature of the work is such that it cannot be effectively performed by people with disabilities.