For for 192 straight months -or 16 years – the number of people getting federal disability checks has grown. That’s staggering enough but it seems much of the country is just now waking up to these skyrocketing numbers thanks in large part to a stunning investigative piece for NPR titled “Unfit for Work” which outlined the following:
Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.
That’s up almost 30 percent from just four years ago.
Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then (according to the author.)
And it’s not difficult to take these numbers a tad further:
A 14 million “Workforce of the Disabled” is equivalent to six times the worldwide workforce of Walmart, the biggest private employer on Earth.
If even 10 million of those people were instead employed, they and their employers would contribute nearly $19 billion a year into the Social Security coffers, helping preserve their own future government retiree benefits. (At the current 12.4 percent withholding rate.)
If those who collect disability were counted in unemployment numbers, our March 2013 jobless rate would be 16.5 percent, more than double the reported 7.6 percent.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor
via Social Security Disability: The New “Unemployment”?Job Creators Network.
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