While New York state’s unemployment rate has held steady at around 4%, the unemployment rate for disabled New Yorkers is much higher, at 64%, and has remained there for some time.

Maureen O’Brien, president and CEO of New York State Industries for the Disabled, joined Capital Tonight to discuss that higher rate of unemployment, and what is being done to bring it down.

“We work with 138 member agencies around the state which do vocational and rehabilitative training for individuals with disabilities to help them get not only the services they need but also the experience they need to get into the workforce,” she said. “The more we can empower those agencies to do the work that they do so well the better off we will be.”

O’Brien said NYSID served just over 6,500 people last year and are on track to equal that this year, but the overall goal is to double that to 12,000 people under contracts that are in place.

O’Brien discussed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive order to make New York an "employment first" state and the push to expand preferred source law to include formerly incarcerated people.