Jobs are pretty important.  Obviously, we live in an economic system that happens to value “productive” labour – i.e., work done in jobs.  We get paid for jobs.  Through jobs, we also get something to do with our days and a way to be satisfied with ourselves, a way to feel that we are contributing to society. (I personally don’t think productive labour should be so closely tied to our self-worth and the way society values us – I don’t see why a person’s worth should be determined by how much money they earn – but I have to acknowledge the reality in which we live.)

It is, of course, unfortunately the case that many autistic people do not have jobs.  Furthermore, many of us who do have jobs have low-paying jobs, jobs which are well below the level of our qualifications.  Some of us go from job to job, alternating periods of employment with periods of unemployment.  To my mind, this is not an acceptable situation.

I’ve written elsewhere that I fear many autistic people are struggling because people around them have had low expectations, low expectations that have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In that post, I mentioned something about the importance of getting early work experience.  According to Carter et al. (2012), who studied factors that predict later work outcomes, getting job experience in high school predicts later job outcomes.

Now, if you’re a good scientist, you may be complaining that correlation doesn’t equal causation.  Maybe this finding simply means that the most able kids get early job experience and also do well in the job market later on – that is, maybe the third factor of ability causes both early job outcomes and later job outcomes.  It’s not a terribly implausible idea.[1]

Fortunately, we have causal evidence.  Wehman et al. (2017) ran a randomized clinical trial in which they compared job outcomes for autistic high school students who were assigned either to a control group or to a supported internship program.  The effect is enormous – a year later, 87% of the students in the program were employed, compared to just 12% of the control students.  That’s probably the biggest effect I’ve ever seen anywhere in the autism literature.

There’s all sorts of reasons that early, high school job experience would be helpful.  Consider:

• Navigating a job search is complicated and difficult!  We have to research jobs.  We have to generate a resume and write cover letters specialized to the job in question.  Then, we have to go to a job interview, which is an unusual and extremely tricky social situation.  Getting early job experience means that the job search is familiar to us, so we can more easily navigate job searches in the future.
• Getting early job experience gives us something we can put on our resume and it can give us references.  It’s normal for employers to see job applications from high school students with no previous work experience.  However, that could quickly start to raise eyebrows as people get older.
• Getting a job means that one gets experience of a workplace culture.  There are social expectations and unwritten rules, and if we have experience, we have more practice navigating the social expectations of the workplace environment.
• Getting a job can make us more confident in our own ability to succeed in the workplace and, indeed, in adulthood more generally. It can increase our sense of self-efficacy and empower us.

And ultimately, it’s just evidence-based.  So please, don’t ignore the need for job experience.

---

[1] Although I do feel that, in general, parents might play a big role in whether kids will be motivated get job experience in high school.  Kids’ ability to work might be secondary.