Friday 1 February 2013

Strong, Determined and Capable (Joining the Minority)

So Monday (today being Saturday) is going to be a pretty momentous day for me.

I am privileged to be joining the extreme minority of individuals with ASD who are working full time. ASD unemployment rates are horrendous and even dire statistics are deceptive because they don't count people being employed in terms of "living wages" - that is in terms of whether they earn enough to meet their basic needs or not. Any kind of employment counts. This means that when I worked 9 hours a fortnight I still would have counted as being employed by most statistics which put ASD unemployment at 70-90% even though what I earned from my job wouldn't have even covered my rent let alone food and so on.