What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool?

"You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.” Temple Grandin

“There are a lot of autistic people who could give an awful lot to workplaces, but the environment around them makes it difficult – not them”?(Amaze).

Attention to detail, logic over emotion, highly original thinkers, strict adherence to rules and long- term memory of facts are just some of the qualities of autistic people. Despite this the unemployment rate for autistic people is 3 times the rate of people with disability, and almost 6 times the rate of people without disability (Amaze).

Underemployment another outcome of the dominant ideology - Neoliberalism hardly receives any press, yet the impact of this is far reaching. It often sees people juggling several part-time, low paid jobs for which they are over-qualified just to get by. Underemployment occurs when a person does not work full time or takes a job that does not reflect their actual training and financial needs. That is, their job doesn’t use all their skills and education, or provides less than full time work.

People are considered underemployed if they are skilled workers in low-income jobs, skilled workers in jobs that don’t fully use their skills or part-time workers who would rather work full-time. Despite recording a fall of 0.2% in unemployment to 4.9% in June 2021, the latest labour force statistics published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed a rise of 0.5% in underemployment to 7.9% (The Guardian).

This is evident in the research by Amaze which showed that more than half of unemployed autistic Australians (54%) have never had a paid job, despite often possessing the skills and qualifications. It showed that more than half of autistic Australians would like to be working more hours and given a more challenging role, with 45% reporting that their skills were higher than required in their current job.

Preconceived ideas need to change regarding employing autistic people. Being an employer willing to look at the potential of all employees, you will have access to some brilliant minds and hard workers that other organisations have overlooked.

Written by Sandra Cookland

Project Officer, Asperger Services Australia