More than two decades after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, California disability rights lawyers are seeing more citizens with disabilities joining the ranks of the unemployed. Employment numbers of disabled Americans are at some of their lowest levels in recent years.

According to research, the portion of disabled Americans who are working has dropped to 21%. Back in the early 1990s, the number was about 35%. Currently, the unemployment rate for disabled Americans is about 16%.

Researchers have a number of reasons for this. One of the reasons is that the national employment situation is dire, and the disabled now find more competition for jobs from non-disabled citizens. What California disability rights attorneys also find very disconcerting is the fact that employers have become more discriminating towards people with disabilities. A large number of disabled Americans are being turned away from jobs because of an employer mindset that they are not capable of performing these jobs. This has led to a number of complaints to the Equal Employment Report City Commission.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there has been a spike in the number of workplace complaints that allege workplace discrimination based on disability. These complaints have increased substantially since the recession. In 2010, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 25,165 disability discrimination complaints. During the first half of 2011 alone, there were 12,317 disability discrimination complains.

The recession and reduced employment prospects seem to have affected disabled workers much harder than disabled workers. According to officials at the Disability Statistics Center at the University Of California, over the past three years, disabled Americans lost jobs at a rate that was nearly 3 times as high as that for non-disabled workers. Workers with some disabilities have been hit harder than others. For instance, those who suffer from hearing disabilities have found their share of participation in the workforce drop by 21% between October 2009 and August 2011.