While the vast majority of Americans with disabilities want to work, just over one-third are able to find jobs, according to a recent survey from RespectAbility,  a nonprofit that works to empower and increase opportunities for people with disabilities.

That creates a major societal problem: Without gainful employment, more than 12 million people are losing out on wages that might fuel more independence, never mind the obvious hit to their feelings of self-worth. But there’s some good news: more than 343,000 new workers with disabilities took jobs in 2016, four times as many as the year before.

That finding is part of a separate RespectAbility report analyzing recent data from the 2017 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, an online repository of federal data that’s compiled by the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire. The current percentage of people with disabilities who have jobs stands at 36 percent compared to 78 percent of people without disabilities who are employed.

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