New Jersey had the lowest disability rate for people ages 16 to 64, according to 2009 survey results from the U.S. Census Bureau released this morning. About 7.5 percent or 426,109 disabled people lived in New Jersey in 2009. That rate was statistically even with California, Colorado, Illinois, Hawaii, Minnesota and Utah. West Virginia had the country's highest disability...
Census workers unload boxes of informational brochures about the 2010 Census at Journal Square in Jersey City in this January file photo.
New Jersey had the lowest disability rate for people ages 16 to 64, according to 2009 survey results from the U.S. Census Bureau released this morning.
About 7.5 percent or 426,109 disabled people lived in New Jersey in 2009. That rate was statistically even with California, Colorado, Illinois, Hawaii, Minnesota and Utah. West Virginia had the country's highest disability rate with 16.8 percent.
Nationally, 19.5 million people or 9.9 percent of the working-age civilian, non-institutionalized population had a disability. Neither the number nor rate of disability changed from 2008 to 2009.
The findings were part of the American Community Survey, an annual assessment by the U.S. Census Bureau that polls about 3 million people to create an estimate for the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It is not the 2010 census which is a count of everyone in the country. The results of the 2010 census will be released in December and early in 2011.
Disabilities were grouped into vision, hearing, cognitive and ambulatory types.
Nationally, 23 percent of people with disabilities were employed, compared with 71.9 percent of the general population.
North Dakota and Wyoming led disabled employment with 34 percent employed. District of Columbia, Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia were at the bottom with 21 percent. In New Jersey, 23.8 percent of the working age disabled population was employed, compared to 66.9 percent of the Garden State's general population.