Disabled Minnesotans face barriers and celebrate milestones in employment

Every October, National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) is celebrated across the country. For people with disabilities, employment can be the ticket for independent living, community integration, and economic autonomy.

But for years there have been too many barriers.

To explore how these barriers have changed over the years and what needs to happen in the future, Access Press met with David Dively, Executive Director of the Minnesota Council on Disability (MCD). From historic state hiring benchmarks and innovative job-sharing models to looming budget battles and the fight to protect remote work, Dively shared where the state is making measurable progress, and where barriers continue to hold workers back.

A 40-Year mission anchored in employment

A professional man stands confidently outdoors, surrounded by blooming trees, symbolizing progress for disabled Minnesotans. — David Dively, Executive Director of the Minnesota Council on Disability (MCD)

Employment policy is not a secondary issue for the Minnesota Council on Disability; it is part of their origin story.

“One thing that’s kind of interesting specifically about employment and disability is that that is one of the main reasons MCD was initially created over 40 years ago,” Dively explained. When states were mandated to establish advisory councils focusing on employment and special education, Minnesota formed the entity that evolved into today’s council.

Today, MCD helps bridge state workforce investment with real-world labor needs through its seat on the Governor’s Workforce Development Board (GWDB), hosted by the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED).

“Employment has historically been huge,” Dively emphasized. “It allows people to be more independent, to have more autonomy, to live on their own and to be productive.It touches on lots of parts of our life — food, housing, transportation.”

State government surpasses historic hiring goals

While the private sector often struggles with disability representation, Minnesota state government has made it a priority and achieved remarkable success.

“We have gone from around 1 or 2% of the Minnesota state workforce identifying as having a disability to now in double digits—it’s over 10%,” Dively said. “At one point, our goal was 7%, and that was seen as too aggressive and too ambitious. But now we’re past that, and that’s a good thing worth celebrating.”

Customized employment

Building on programs like Connect 700, which provides an alternative, non-competitive hiring pathway with up to 700 hours of on-the-job demonstration, the state is preparing to launch a modernized custom program (formerly known as the Supported Worker Program).

After two years of development alongside agency human resources teams, the initiative will allow state departments to restructure roles to meet non-traditional employment needs.

“We’re working on a customized employment option where you can have two or three different people who maybe aren’t able to work a full-time position individually combine together to create one full-time equivalent position,” Dively explained. “We’re about to finalize it, and we hope agencies will take advantage of it to further increase hiring of disabled workers.”

Looming budget pressures and economic realities

The timing of NDEAM coincides with a tightening economic landscape. Historically, during economic contractions or slowing job growth, individuals with disabilities experience higher rates of job loss and extended periods of unemployment.

“Whenever this happens, our concern at MCD is to really make sure we’re focusing on our vocational rehabilitation and disability employment supports,” said Dively. “Usually when the economy is struggling a little bit more, hiring for disabled workers is not as strong. When that happens, we need to make sure the resources are there to support our community members.”

With Minnesota heading into an election season and a budget-setting legislative session in January, MCD is already assessing whether existing workforce programs will require defensive advocacy.

“We’re expecting at a minimum a tight budget,” Dively noted. “One of the things MCD is going to want to look at specifically is how our employment supports are doing, and what kind of investments they need.”

Financial barriers for returning to work

A perennial hurdle for workers with disabilities is the terrifying “benefits cliff.” When individuals transition into the workforce, exceeding federal income caps can trigger the abrupt loss of vital healthcare, personal care assistance (PCA), and waiver services.

While federal trial work periods offer temporary earnings windows, they do not resolve the long-term risk. The biggest benefit that Minnesota offers is something that Dively has fought hard to protect, Medical Assistance for Employed Persons with Disabilities (MA-EPD). MA-EPD allows people with disabilities to pay a premium, work and earn income and still maintain their health care.

“Programs like MA-EPD are so important,” Dively said. “We need to make it affordable and reasonable for people to continue to get the services they need and be able to have employment — those two things must not be in conflict with each other.”

While eliminating MA-EPD premiums entirely remains a long-term community goal, Dively acknowledged the fiscal headwinds. “In principle, having zero premiums is awesome, but the winds are against us when the state is trying to find places to cut costs. We want to continue to make MA-EPD as accessible and affordable as possible.”

The return-to-office pushback and private sector myths

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread remote work opened unprecedented career opportunities for disabled Minnesotans by eliminating transit barriers, inaccessible office layouts, and inflexible schedules. However, corporate mandates requiring employees back at physical desks four to five days a week risk undoing those gains.

“We saw how effective work-from-home accommodations can be,” Dively said. “While pushing away from remote work is a challenge right now, we have demonstrated that for many positions in many organizations, working from home is a reasonable accommodation that people can reasonably ask for. It was a super successful help for disabled people trying to find jobs, and we don’t want people to forget that.”

Beyond telework, Dively stressed that employers still harbor outdated fears regarding the cost and complexity of workplace modifications.

“Accommodations are oftentimes not as expensive as employers worry about, and a lot of them are one-time or specific,” Dively said. “It’s not as big of a barrier as people make it out to be.”
Ultimately, Dively argued that the most persistent barrier isn’t written into law, it’s organizational culture and unconscious bias. We can all work together to show what people with disabilities are capable of and how they can make a difference.

“On paper, we have a lot of the rights that we need to protect people. But in practice, there are still the ways people behave, the biases, and the misconceptions,” Dively said. “Hiring people with disabilities is not something you’re doing out of charity. Having people with disabilities in your organization is a good business practice.”