The Autistic Employment Conundrum

Underemployment is consistently one of the largest problems for autistic adults. Innumerable autistic traits contribute to autistic adults’ difficulties obtaining and maintaining employment.

We struggle with or lack social skills. This impacts our ability to do well in job interviews and our ability to network, which has been shown to be more vital to success than intelligence or job skills.

We struggle with burnout and may not be able to maintain the same work-related pace as neurotypicals. It is difficult to work eight-hour days, five days a week, without breaks. We can usually produce the same amount of work but we tend to thrive best working more hours and then taking regular breaks.

Our behaviors may be offputting to neurotypical colleagues. Stimming, fidgeting, and other tics tend to be frowned upon in neurotypical society. We can mask, but the longer we mask, the more burnt out we become—and autistic burnout can lead to massive mental health issues.

According to Autism Now, only 32.5 percent of young autistic adults are employed, while 78 percent of neurotypical young adults are employed. According to Bury et al. (2024), autistic people struggle to both find and keep employment. They said that several key factors could increase the likelihood of this—but few of the autistic people I work with fall into this narrow niche of autistic adults.

According to their research, “Those younger age, male gender, higher education, later diagnosis age, and no co-occurring conditions were more likely to have stable employment.” However, most autistic adults have co-occurring conditions, many have struggled with education, and many of us are assigned female at birth.

I have been incredibly lucky. I opened my own private practice and am surrounded by people who know I am autistic and are affirming my struggles. My clients understand when I go into a period of autistic burnout and need time off, my colleagues accept my odd tics and lack of social skills, and I don’t need to network as my writing and therapeutic work speak for me. Over the years, I have built a base of clients who I have helped and who refer to me regularly, and I have built a body of writing that speaks when I am unable to speak.

A few weeks ago, I was offered a job I desperately wanted: keynote speaker for an organizational event I feel passionate about. There were a lot of things I was excited about saying. However, they wanted me to go through the application process with several other potential speakers, which involved interviewing and providing a work history and references.

It has been a long time since I failed at a work-related task so completely. I flubbed the interview. I got nervous and talked about Dungeons and Dragons and other nonsense. I couldn’t remember all the places I had spoken at before, and the idea of reaching out to anyone who I had spoken for in the past made me panic.

I enjoy speaking and love doing training on autism—but the idea of asking someone to comment on how I had done speaking to another human was impossible on innumerable levels. I would have to reach out to the person and ask them to do a favor for me. I never know how to do this and always feel like I am begging or demanding.

The nuance of this social interaction is impossibly complex—and even if you nail the nuance of this social interaction, you must pester them to do the task in a timely manner. I had to just tell the person who had asked me to speak that I couldn’t complete their requested process requirements.

This process was incredibly humbling and eye-opening for me. Amongst the people I work with in support groups and therapy, about 20 percent are happily employed. The rest are stuck in jobs that they know they can’t maintain, bounce from job to job, or are just unemployed.

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Much of their depression and anxiety comes from the fact that they are unable to meet neurotypical expectations of functionality nor are they able to entirely support and care for themselves. It is a terrible thing to live amongst people who call you lazy, stupid, and inept when you are trying as hard as you can to meet expectations. This is what it often is like living as an autistic adult.

Yet, even when I was asked to do a job by an autistic-affirming organization, I was asked to meet neurotypical expectations for job credibility. If even applying for a job that wants you for a neuroaffirmative organization can be impossible, how can anyone expect to apply for a job that isn’t neuroaffirmative and succeed?

There are a few success stories out there. I live in Huntsville, Alabama which is a city built by NASA and the military-industrial complex. There are a lot of engineers here and many of them are very successful autistic adults. I am relatively successful and my tiny failure doesn’t amount to much, but others will and have folded and collapsed under the pressure of a neurotypical work world that makes no allowances for autistic people.

Yet success stories can teach more than failures. Many autistic adults thrive at their jobs. This is often because they work at places that provide flex time, adequate PTO, and quiet, sensory-safe places; they also don’t require neurotypical social skills and allow for FMLA.

I hire autistic people for my practice preferentially because I believe they can accomplish far more than any neurotypical. They are brilliant and think out of the box and have made my practice innovative and unique.

I feel that employers’ failure to see beyond our differences limits and hinders not only autistic adults but our society. How much talent and innovation is wasted because of our neurotypical hiring practices or because we can’t allow people to have a little flex time?