Reasons for Not Working During the Coronavirus Pandemic Among Working-Age Persons With and Without Disabilities in the US.

OBJECTIVE: To provide new information about the reasons why persons with and without disabilities were not working during the coronavirus pandemic. DESIGN: Secondary analysis of the Household Pulse Survey conducted between April 14, 2021, and May 9, 2022. SETTING: The United States. PARTICIPANTS: 876,865 people with and without disabilities aged 18-64 years (N=876,865). INTERVENTION: N/A. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Reasons for not working such as "Sick with coronavirus symptoms or caring for someone who was sick with coronavirus symptoms", "Concerned about getting or spreading the coronavirus", "Sick (not coronavirus related) or disabled", "Laid off or furloughed due to coronavirus pandemic", "Employer closed temporarily due to the coronavirus pandemic", "Caring for children not in school or daycare", "Caring for an elderly person", "Retired", "Did not have transportation to work", and "other" reasons. RESULTS: The number of people with disabilities and people without disabilities in the sample was 82,703 and 794,162, respectively. People with disabilities were more likely to report that they were laid off or furloughed and less likely to report that they did not want employment than people without disabilities. Working-age adults with disabilities were more likely to report health or disability reasons not related to coronavirus than working-age adults without disabilities as a reason for not working. Caring for children not in school or daycare was 1 of the most cited reasons for both people with and without disabilities. Women, among both the groups, were more likely to not work primarily due to caregiving responsibilities. People with disabilities were more likely to report getting or spreading the coronavirus and less likely to report being retired as a reason for not working than people without disabilities. CONCLUSION: Analyzing reasons why people with disabilities were not working during the pandemic is crucial for successful employment policymaking in a post-pandemic world.

A Steady-State Approach for Studying Valley Relaxation Using an Optical Vortex Beam.

Spin-valley coupling in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides gives rise to valley polarization and coherence effect, limited by intervalley scattering caused by exciton-phonon, exciton-impurity, and electron-hole exchange interactions (EHEIs). We explore an approach to tune the EHEI by controlling the exciton center of mass momentum (COM) utilizing the photon distribution of higher-order optical vortex beams. By virtue of this, we have observed exciton-COM-dependent valley depolarization and decoherence, which gives us the ability to probe the valley relaxation time scale in a steady-state measurement. Our steady-state technique to probe the valley dynamics can open up a new paradigm to explore the physics of excitons in two-dimensional systems.

Changes in the Employment Status of People With and Without Disabilities in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: Using data from the monthly Current Population Survey, this paper provides monthly employment and unemployment statistics for people with and without disabilities in the United States before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic to date (January 2021). DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of the Current Population Survey. SETTING: The United States. PARTICIPANTS: People with and without disabilities ages 16-64 years. INTERVENTION: N/A MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Percentage employed, percentage unemployed, percentage not in labor force, percentage on temporary layoff, percentage looking for work. RESULTS: Estimates show that, like workers without disabilities, workers with disabilities experienced increases in unemployment at the beginning of the pandemic but continued to remain engaged in the labor force. Our analysis finds that employment rates dropped from 74.8% to 63.2% for those without disabilities and from 31.1% to 26.4% for those with disabilities between February 2020 and April 2020 but gradually improved in the succeeding months. CONCLUSIONS: As the pandemic continued, the percentage of unemployed people with and without disabilities on temporary layoff decreased and those looking for work increased.