Understanding Autism: The Shocking Graduate Employment Gap

Despite legislation on protected characteristics, autistic graduates are still much more likely to be out of work than their neurotypical counterparts.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

The job market is tough for most people at the moment. Highly qualified people are unable to secure jobs for which they are ideally suited for all sorts of reasons, not least that there are just not enough good jobs to go around. Add to this the reflex cutbacks made under the ludicrous belief that AI can now do everything without demanding things like fair treatment and the right to work from home, and the picture is bleak.

But do you know what makes your chances of getting and keeping a job even worse? Being autistic. Autistic graduates in the UK are twice as likely to still be searching for employment 15 months after graduating as their neurotypical counterparts. And this is with all the woke, equal treatment rules that many like to moan about. Autistic people looking for work are clearly not being treated fairly, regardless of the legal protections that are supposed to be in place.

Bear in mind, too, that these are autistic graduates. Graduating involves negotiating several years of study at a large institution, including mixing with others, presenting your work, demonstrating understanding, and so on. These people are not afraid to leave the house, and they are used to making their way in a neurotypical world.

So what is going wrong? Just about everything.

Let me give you an example. A few years ago, I applied for a job and got an interview. I am terrible at interviews. They are all the things I am really bad at, all rolled into a single event on which the future course of my life depends. I am awful at talking to new people, I hate unfamiliar surroundings, I am easily distracted, and I hate talking myself up, to name just a few of the things that make interviews so hard for me.

I failed the interview. I always do, regardless of my suitability for the job. I have passed a two-day intensive selection program and then been thrown out after a 40-minute confirmation interview. But in the case of this interview, I had included in my application that I was autistic and would really struggle with the interview. So when I got the inevitable rejection, I asked how my declaration had been taken into account. The reply astonished me. The adjustments made for me being autistic were that I was asked if I was ok at the start of the interview. That’s it.

Now, I agree that I could and should have been more proactive in making clear what help I needed. But the recruiters were also at fault for not bothering to even ask me. And this, I suspect, is what is going on all the time.

Then there is the small matter of recruitment being based on criteria other than ability to do the job. Again, I get this to an extent. Nobody wants to employ a genius who is appalling to everyone around them. But we seem to have reached the stage where all too often things like ‘cultural fit’ and ‘team player’ are far more important than competence. Whether intentional or not, these more nebulous criteria inevitably favour neurotypical candidates because they are focused on the very social skills that many autistic people struggle with. It is no different than the way that doing something that adversely impacts all part-time workers disproportionately impacts on women because the majority of these employees are female.

Even when autistic people do get a job, we are still faced with a struggle, because progression in your career and often even just keeping your job can depend on these soft skills rather than your performance in the role. The playing field is tilted steeply in favour of neurotypicals, who inevitably keep appointing more and more people like them when given a choice.

What is needed are anti-discrimination measures that bite and ensure that people are selected on ability, not whether you want to go for a drink with them. Where the incredible skills and abilities of many unemployed autistic people are properly valued instead of being dismissed because they don’t make eye contact. Appointing your mates, or people you would like to be your mates, regardless of their experience and ability, is seen as an abuse of the system.

Autistic people have so much to offer in the workplace, but time and again, our abilities to do the job are sidelined by our inability to talk about doing it. How can this be fixed? Talk to the experts. Autistic people themselves. Ask us for advice on what would make a recruitment system fair and open. We don’t want special treatment. We just want the same chance as everyone else.