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How many federal employees are there who are blind or visually impaired?
Hello! Thanks for your request to analyze how many federal employees are there who are blind or visually impaired. The short version is that there was no direct statistic published that would concern blind federal employees only. For that reason, we triangulated the figures and managed to establish that approximately 29,600 federal employees are blind or have some type of visual impairment. Below you will find a deep dive of my methodology and findings.
METHODOLOGY
To answer your question, we researched a variety of government sources as well as trusted media websites. We provided data on statistics for employees with disabilities working in the government, as well as statistics as to how many visually impaired people there are in the US and how many of them are employed. We then took the data for the overall work force in the US and the total of blind people employed in the US and triangulated what percentage of blind people make up in the overall US workforce. Afterwards, we applied this percentage to the people working in the government alone and managed to get a triangulation of the total of blind and visually impaired people working as federal employees.
OVERVIEW OF STATISTICS FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE IN THE US
According to a government source from 2015, between fiscal years 2011 and 2014, federal agencies hired almost 72,000 full-time permanent employees with disabilities. That lead to the percentage of the total federal workforce with disabilities to increase from 12.8% to 13.6%. Another source from this year confirms this with a recent quote on employees with disabilities. Currently, federal employees with disabilities make up for 14.41% of the overall federal workforce, accounting for 264,844 people.
In 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed "that 12 percent of the workforce at federal agencies be made up of people with disabilities, including at the highest pay scales". Important for this research is that the proposal also calls for "2% representation rate, at all levels, for people with severe disabilities, which include total deafness in both ears, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism".
Blindness statistics by the American Community Survey from 2015 note that there are 1,526,100 blind or visually impaired people in the U.S. who are employed in some capacity. Out of that number, 1,019,100 people in the U.S. are employed full-time. That translates into the following statistic: "for working age adults reporting significant vision loss, only 42.0% were employed in 2015".
According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, "out of almost 4 million people who reported blindness or serious difficulty seeing in September 2016, approximately 3 million were identified as not in the labor force. And of the approximately 2 million working age adults (16 to 64 years of age) who reported blindness or serious difficulty seeing, only about 918,000 (43.6%) were included in the civilian labor force".
TRIANGULATION
According to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal workforce is composed of an estimated 2 million civilian workers. The previously mentioned number of 72,000 employees with disabilities including blindness and visual impairment can also help direct us regarding the number of purely blind and visually impaired federal employees. Additionally, a federal program called Ability One that hires 46,000 blind workers to service the government in some capacity. However, in this case it is not specified if they only work as government employees, but it is a federal agency.
In order to calculate an estimate of the blind and visually impaired federal employees in the US, we first need the number of the total US labor force which is 161.05 million. Next, the total blind workforce amounts to 918,000 people. If we divide the total blind workforce by the total US labor force, we get the percentage of the US work force that is blind or has a visual impairment. The calculation would then be: 918,000 / 161.05 million = 1.48% which means that approximately 1.48% of the US civilian work force is blind or has a visual impairment.
Then we can apply this methodology to the government workforce and triangulate that 1.48% of 2 million people who work in the government workforce amounts to approximately 29,600 federal employees who are blind or have some type of visual impairment.
Now, if we compare the results of our triangulation to the statistics published by Ability One that claims they employ 46,000 blind workers to service the government in some capacity, it would seem that not all their workers then work for the government, or maybe not in full-time capacity.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, approximately 1.48% of the US civilian work force of 2 million is blind or has a visual impairment. That amounts to approximately 29,600 federal employees who are blind or have some type of visual impairment.
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