Highlights
Employment and Poverty among People with Disabilities in NYC
What five years of American Community Survey data show, borough by borough
Prepared by Marc Safman, Principal, Safman Consulting
Based on research by the UNH Institute on Disability
Analysis: Jiffy Lansing · Data: Nate Thomas
Data: ACS 5-Year Summary Files, 2020–2024 · September 2026
5
boroughs
18–64
working-age residents
2020–24
ACS 5-year estimates
Marc Safman
(917) 825-1471
marc@safmanconsulting.com
www.safmanconsulting.com
The data
What we looked at
Source
ACS 5-Year Summary Files, 2020–2024; data pulled by Nate Thomas and analyzed by Jiffy Lansing, UNH Institute on Disability
Who
Working-age residents (18–64) in all five boroughs: about 5.4 million people
Disability
Six ACS functional questions (vision, hearing, cognitive, ambulatory, self-care, independent living) plus a combined hearing + vision group. Categories overlap: people may report more than one difficulty
Breakdowns
Borough × race/ethnicity × disability type; estimates with missing data or large standard errors are left out
Who has a disability
~493,000 working-age New Yorkers have a disability
The Bronx rate, 15.6%, is far higher than every other borough (7.4%–8.8%)
- Bronx15.6% · 134,126
- Staten Island8.8% · 26,756
- Brooklyn8.2% · 134,739
- Manhattan8.1% · 90,125
- Queens7.4% · 107,393
Employment
People with disabilities are employed at about half the rate
- Bronx32% with a disability67% without a disability
- Brooklyn38% with a disability74% without a disability
- Manhattan38% with a disability76% without a disability
- Queens40% with a disability74% without a disability
- Staten Island32% with a disability74% without a disability
Poverty
Poverty rates are roughly twice as high among people with disabilities
- Bronx36% with a disability18% without a disability
- Brooklyn27% with a disability13% without a disability
- Manhattan27% with a disability11% without a disability
- Queens19% with a disability9% without a disability
- Staten Island17% with a disability8% without a disability
Borough spotlight
The Bronx stands out: 15.6% disability · 32% employed · 36% in poverty
15.6%
have a disability
vs. 7.4%–8.8% in the other boroughs
32%
employed
among Bronx residents with disabilities, vs. 67% without
36%
in poverty
among Bronx residents with disabilities, vs. 18% without
By disability type
Employment disparities vary sharply by disability type
- Vision38–66%
- Hearing27–62%
- Cognitive16–50%
- Ambulatory10–28%
- Self-care7–26%
By race and ethnicity
Manhattan shows striking racial and ethnic employment disparities
| Disability type | Hispanic | Black | White |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vision | 38% | 41% | 66% |
| Hearing | 44% | 42% | 60% |
| Cognitive | 23% | 16% | 50% |
| Ambulatory | 11% | 12% | 28% |
| Self-care | 7% | 8% | 26% |
Large racial and ethnic gaps persist within disability groups
Cognitive difficulty: 50% of White residents employed, vs. 23% of Hispanic and 16% of Black residents.
The limits of the data
What we cannot reliably measure: DeafBlind New Yorkers
Not reliable
Too small to reliably estimate
One ACS estimate suggests a 54% poverty rate for Hispanic Manhattan residents with hearing + vision difficulty, but the underlying population estimate is only ~1,100 and is based on far fewer survey responses.
- Hearing + vision difficulty is used as a proxy for DeafBlind; it is not a direct measure
- Hearing + vision counts are very small in every borough, even for each borough's largest race/ethnicity groups
- Staten Island has no usable hearing + vision data at all
- Some borough-level ACS estimates are zero despite known community presence
- This is itself a finding: ACS data alone cannot reliably describe DeafBlind New Yorkers at the borough level
NYC disability employment and poverty
Three takeaways
1. Employment
32–40%
with disabilities
vs. 67–76% without
2. Poverty
17–36%
with disabilities
vs. 8–18% without
3. The data gap
The more locally we examine low-incidence populations such as DeafBlind New Yorkers, the less reliable ACS estimates become
NYC needs better administrative data to understand who is being left out, and where.
Let's talk
Marc Safman
Principal, Safman Consulting
Research and data: Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire (Jiffy Lansing, Nate Thomas) · ACS 5-Year Summary Files, 2020–2024
Questions and discussion
Happy to walk through the full borough-level findings or talk about next steps on local data.
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