Saturday, October 03, 2026

U.S. Employment for people with disabilities in September: Surpassing 40% for the first time

nTIDE October 2026 Jobs Report

Kessler Foundation

nTIDE Month-to-Month Comparison of Labor Market Indicators for People with and without Disabilities — image:
Despite signs of a slowing U.S. labor market in September, employment and labor force participation increased for people with disabilities. From August 2026 to September 2026, the employment-to-population ratio rose from 39.8 to 40.3 percent for people with disabilities and from 74.6 to 75.0 percent for people without disabilities. The labor force participation rate increased from 43.4 to 43.8 percent for people with disabilities and from 77.9 to 78.1 percent for people without disabilities.
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Credit: Kessler Foundation

East Hanover, NJ – October 2, 2026 – Although U.S. job growth slowed in September, employment among Americans with disabilities continued to rise, with the employment-to-population ratio reaching an all-time high of 40.3 percent. The milestone increase came during a month in which the nation added 29,000 jobs, and the official unemployment rate edged up to 4.2 percent. That’s according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) Jobs Report, issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability. nTIDE tracks employment and labor force trends for people with and without disabilities.

Based on data from today’s BLS Jobs Report and nTIDE analysis, the employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities (ages 16-64) increased from 39.8 percent in August 2026 to 40.3 percent in September 2026 (up 1.3 percent or 0.5 percentage points). For people without disabilities (ages 16-64), the employment-to-population ratio increased from 74.6 percent in August 2026 to 75 percent in September 2026 (up 0.5 percent or 0.4 percentage points). The employment-to-population ratio, a key indicator, is the percentage of people who are working relative to the total population (the number of people working divided by the total population, then multiplied by 100).

"The employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities was at an all-time high of 40.3 percent in September, breaking through the post-COVID employment plateau," said John O’Neill, PhD, director of the Center for Employment and Disability Research at Kessler Foundation. "Last month's numbers may have broken through the 40 percent barrier due to rising prices, necessitating people with disabilities to work to help support their families."

Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing August 2026 to September 2026)
The labor force participation rate for people with disabilities (ages 16-64) slightly increased from 43.4 percent in August 2026 to 43.8 percent in September 2026 (up 0.9 percent or 0.4 percentage points). Similarly, for people without disabilities (ages 16-64), the labor force participation rate slightly increased from 77.9 percent in August 2026 to 78.1 percent in September 2026 (up 0.3 percent or 0.2 percentage points). The labor force participation rate reflects the percentage of people who are in the labor force (working, actively looking for work in the last four weeks, or on temporary layoff/furlough) relative to the total population (the number of people in the labor force divided by the number of people in the total population multiplied by 100).

“The labor market figures for people with disabilities over the past two months have been remarkable,” said Andrew Houtenville, PhD, professor of economics and director of the UNH-IOD. “The labor force participation of people with disabilities also reached a record level, 43.8 percent in September,” he added.

Year-to-Year nTIDE Numbers (comparing September 2025 to September 2026)
Compared with September 2025, employment and labor force participation continued to increase for people with disabilities. The employment-to-population ratio rose from 38.2 to 40.3 percent (up 2.1 percentage points), while the labor force participation rate increased from 42.1 to 43.8 percent (up 1.7 percentage points). For people without disabilities, the employment-to-population ratio increased from 74.7 to 75.0 percent (up 0.3 percentage points) and the labor force participation rate increased from 77.9 to 78.1 percent (up 0.2 percentage points).

In September, among workers ages 16-64, the 6,918,000 workers with disabilities represented 4.6 percent of the total 151785000 workers in the U.S.

Ask Questions about Disability and Employment
On the same day nTIDE is issued, the team hosts an nTIDE Lunch and Learn webinar. This live Zoom broadcast gives attendees a chance to ask questions about the latest findings, hear news and updates from the field, and learn from invited panelists who discuss current disability-related research and events.

On October 2, 2026, guest presenter Charyl S. Yarbrough, PhD, of the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development, joins Drs. O’Neill and Houtenville, and Kimberly Knackstedt, executive director at the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. Visit the nTIDE archives at ResearchonDisability.org/nTIDE to see a recording of this nTIDE Lunch and Learn episode.

About National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE)
nTIDE is a joint effort of Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability. The nTIDE team tracks employment trends for people with and without disabilities and issues monthly reports that reflect the impact of economic changes on the workforce. These reports use data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics but are customized by UNH-IOD to focus on working-age adults (ages 16 to 64). nTIDE is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR; 90RTGE0005) and Kessler Foundation.

About the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire
The Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire, founded in 1987, seeks to expand access and opportunity for people with disabilities in ways that strengthen communities locally and nationally. As part of a Carnegie Classification R1 university, the IOD accelerates disability inclusion through research, education, and collaboration. Its Center for Research on Disability delivers trusted analysis and tools that make disability data more accessible and actionable.

About Kessler Foundation
Kessler Foundation, founded in 1985, is a New Jersey-based nonprofit and global leader in rehabilitation research committed to changing the lives of people with disabilities. By conducting groundbreaking research, Kessler Foundation advances recovery and fosters independence to build a more inclusive and accessible world.

Our team of award-winning scientists develops and tests novel interventions to transform care and optimize mobility, cognition, and quality of life for people with traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, autism, and other neurological and developmental disabilities. By analyzing community and workforce participation, developing evidence-based solutions, and funding impactful community initiatives that expand employment opportunities, Kessler Foundation also addresses barriers to inclusion for people with disabilities.

Powered by a dedicated team of over 175 professionals funded by federal and state grants and private philanthropy, Kessler Foundation is redefining what is possible in rehabilitation care and recovery. For more information, visit kesslerfoundation.org.

New study suggests animals may have evolved vastly earlier than fossil evidence suggests

University of Oxford

image:
Ediacaran sea floor, Namibia, Southwest Africa - 543 million years ago. Credit: Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford / Mighty Fossils.
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Credit: Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford / Mighty Fossils.

Animals may have evolved up to 200 million years earlier than their first appearance in the fossil record. This is according to new research that challenges key assumptions scientists have used to date the origins of animal life.

The earliest animals may have evolved hundreds of millions of years before their first unmistakable fossils are found, according to a new study led by the University of Oxford. The findings, published today (2 Oct) in Science Advances, suggest animals may have originated deep in the Neoproterozoic Era, even before some of the most extreme ice ages in Earth's history.

The findings could transform our understanding of one of evolution's greatest mysteries: why animals seem to appear relatively suddenly in the fossil record just before the Cambrian Period (539 to 487 million years ago), despite other evidence suggesting that their evolutionary history began much earlier.

At the heart of the study is a problem with the way scientists have recently used the fossil record to set a maximum age for the origin of animals.

A roughly 590-million-year-old fossil deposit known as the Weng'an Biota in rocks of Ediacaran age in China preserves microscopic organisms in extraordinary detail, none of which are definitive animals. Scientists have therefore inferred that the first animals must have originated after Weng'an, assuming that this exceptional fossil deposit would have preserved them if they existed at this time.

How new fossils from Mongolia challenge assumptions

The research team, which included members from the University of California Berkeley, ETH Zürich, and Yale University, carried out a comprehensive survey of exceptionally well-preserved microfossils from the Kheseen Biota in Mongolia. The Kheseen Biota is more than 40 million years younger than Weng’an, even though they share some species. By this time animal fossils are known from sites elsewhere around the world, including Namibia and South China.

The researchers studied over 140 samples, including some from previously undocumented localities, and examined them using scanning electron microscopy. This revealed exquisite new microfossil species including acritarchs (tiny spherical organisms with spines and branching projections) as well as embryo-like fossils containing internal cells. Yet, despite this remarkable level of preservation, none can be confidently identified as an animal.

Senior author Associate Professor Ross Anderson (Museum of Natural History, Oxford University) said: “The Kheseen Biota breaks the argument that the exceptional microfossils of Weng'an mean we would have seen animal fossils in the assemblage had they existed at the time. The Kheseen microfossils are just as well-preserved, yet animals continue to be absent – despite the fact we know at that point they existed.”

Animals must have lived in different environments from those that preserved the fossils in the Kheseen Biota, or the chemical conditions there failed to preserve animal remains.

A hidden history of animal life

Given that the Kheseen Biota was preserved when animals were present but they are nonetheless not preserved as fossils, the researchers argue that Weng’an does not automatically qualify as evidence that no animals existed at that time and only appeared later than 590 million years ago.

Instead, they looked much further back, to several deposits dating from roughly 850 to 730 million years ago. These included the Svanbergfjellet Formation (Norway), Bitter Springs Group (Australia) and Chuar Group (Arizona, USA) - all fossil-rich deposits with the potential to preserve animals, even though they have eluded discovery. These deposits have previously been used as maximum dates for the origin of animals.

Using these older geological constraints, the researchers used a technique called molecular clock analysis. This method compares genetic differences between living species and, using dates from the fossil record as reference points combined with rates of evolution, works backwards to estimate when their ancestors lived. Compared with analyses constrained by the younger Ediacaran Weng’an deposit, this approach shifted the estimated origin of animals backwards by around 200 million years, to between 800 and 700 million years ago.

There are already clues that such a hidden history exists. Chemical fossils, or biomarkers, preserved in ancient rocks provide evidence consistent with sponges living at least 650 million years ago, tens of millions of years before the oldest definitive macroscopic animal fossils.

These early animals would have been small and soft-bodied, without the shells, bones or other hard structures that make later animals easier to preserve. Whether such creatures were fossilised depended on their environment and on an unusual combination of chemical conditions after death.

Could animals pre-date Snowball Earth?

An origin between 800 and 700 million years ago raises striking possibilities: animals may already have evolved before Earth entered some of the most extreme ice ages in its history or even appeared during that inhospitable interval.

During the Cryogenian Period, which began around 720 million years ago, enormous glaciers spread across the planet in episodes commonly known as Snowball Earth. The study reopens questions about whether the conditions associated with Snowball Earth played a role in the origin and early evolution of animal life.

First author, PhD student Orin Lole Durbin (University of Oxford undergraduate at the time of the study, now at Virginia Tech) said: “Pre-Ediacaran animal body fossils still elude us, and this analysis does not prove that animals existed 800 million years ago. However, our new fossil evidence from Mongolia undermines one of the main arguments for restricting animal origins to the Ediacaran interval. Meanwhile, our molecular-clock analyses show how much further back their evolutionary history could extend.”

The researchers say that future work should explore fossil deposits from different parts of the world, representing different environments and modes of fossilisation, in the search for animals. This should also consider all available evidence for animals, including body fossils, traces of their activity and chemical biomarkers.

Professor Anderson added: “Until that evidence becomes available, the precise birth date of the animal kingdom remains uncertain.”

Notes to editors:

For media enquiries and interview requests contact Associate Professor Ross Anderson: ross.anderson@oum.ox.ac.uk

The study ‘Re-evaluating molecular clock maximum age calibrations revives pre-Ediacaran divergence estimates for animals’ will be published in Science Advances at 19:00 BST / 14:00 ET Friday 2 October 202, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aeg6289. To view a copy of the paper before this under embargo, access the Science Advances press pack https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak or contact: vancepak@aaas.org

About the University of Oxford

Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the tenth year running, and number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 300 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past five years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing around £16.9 billion to the UK economy in 2021/22, and supports more than 90,400 full time jobs.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeg6289

Article Title

Re-evaluating molecular clock maximum age calibrations revives pre-Ediacaran divergence estimates for animals

Article Publication Date

2-Oct-2026

Estimated timeline for the origin of animals based on molecular clock analyses. The grey bar on the right of the image is the origin of animals based on an Ediacaran upper calibration. The grey bar to the left is the origin based on older deposits in the Tonian period, as suggested by the new study. Credit: Orin Lole Durbin.

Credit

Orin Lole Durbin.

CaptiAsterocapsoides wenganensis, Kheseen Formation, latest Ediacaran/early Cambrian. Scale bar: 0.1 mm. Credit: Derek Briggs.

Knollisphaeridium maximum, Kheseen Formation, latest Ediacaran/early Cambrian. Scale bar: 0.1 mm. Credit: Derek Briggs.

Study author Associate Professor Ross Anderson (University of Oxford) in the mountains to the west of Lake Khuvsgul, Mongolia during fieldwork in summer 2017. Credit: Ross Anderson.

UB researchers grow salivary glands from pluripotent stem cells

Promising solution for cancer patients and people with Sjögren’s disease that hinders saliva production

University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Extreme dry mouth, caused by radiation for cancer treatment and autoimmune diseases such as Sjögren’s disease, radically affects quality of life for sufferers. It can hamper speaking, swallowing and eating, and for years has seemed an intractable problem.

Attempts to stimulate the salivary glands to produce more saliva or to create artificial saliva have been ineffective.

Now, a small team of University at Buffalo researchers is working on a promising new strategy: creating salivary glands from human pluripotent stem cells (PSC) that could ostensibly be implanted into an individual’s mouth.

“Human pluripotent stem cells can be derived from easily accessible adult somatic cells, such as skin or blood cells, making them an attractive cell source for therapeutic applications,” says Stelios Andreadis, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University at Buffalo.

Andreadis is the co-principal investigator (PI) on the study that was published Sept. 17 in the journal Nature Communications. The co-PI is Olga Baker, PhD, DDS, a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the University at Missouri School of Medicine, in Columbia.

Laura Sherwood, PhD candidate in biomedical engineering and member of Andreadis’s research group, was the first author on the paper, along with Ronel Samuel, who graduated with his PhD in 2024. Last year, Sherwood earned an award for her research on this topic, which she presented at the 2025 Salivary Glands and Exocrine Biology Gordon Research Conference.

Andreadis explains that they are guiding these stem cells through steps that are similar to how salivary glands form during human development. They gradually produce salivary gland epithelial progenitor cells (SGEPs), which organize themselves into tiny, three-dimensional structures called organoids, or mini organs.

“Our findings suggest that salivary gland organoids may hold promise for studying salivary gland development, disease progression and drug screening, as well as for development of cell therapies for salivary gland regeneration,” says Andreadis, who also serves as director of UB’s Center of Cell, Gene and Tissue Engineering and is a member of the UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences.

In 2012, Japanese stem cell researcher Shinya Yamanaka and the late British biologist John Gurdon were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery that mature human cells can be converted to pluripotent stem cells. These cells have the potential to become almost any type of cell in the body.

“These cells have since been used to create vascular cells, brain cells and kidney cells, but they have not yet been successful with the salivary glands,” Andreadis says.

Baker’s research team in Missouri transplanted the organoids into the submandibular salivary glands of immunodeficient mice, which allowed the human-derived tissue to be studied without immune rejection. Andreadis and the UB team then performed the immunostaining and analyzed how well the transplanted organoids integrated and differentiated within the host tissue.

They discovered that after more than 40 days in mice, the transplanted organoids not only survived but also integrated into the existing salivary gland tissue. Further analysis showed that the organoids contained cells that are present in more mature glands, including acinar cells, which produce saliva; ductal cells, which carry saliva to the mouth; and myoepithelial cells, which help squeeze saliva out of the glands.

“These newly formed glands looked similar to native salivary glands and even developed lumens, or the hollow spaces where saliva would normally flow,” Andreadis says.

The team plans to further refine the differentiation process so that the cells comprising the organoids become more mature and their developmental fate can be more precisely controlled.

“Basically, our experiments so far showed that the transplanted organoids have the potential to survive in vivo,” Sherwood says. “They integrated with the gland of the mouse and differentiated to include major salivary gland structures. This means they could, potentially, become a renewable source of replacement cells in patients in the future.”

The team is also working to determine the best stage of organoid development for transplantation and to improve the conditions in which the organoids grow. The goal is to help them produce more saliva and connect properly with the existing ducts that carry saliva to the mouth, as well as with the nerves that control salivary gland function.

“While using these cells in humans is a long way off, this research does suggest that one day scientists could repair salivary glands damaged by radiation therapy, restore saliva production in people with chronic dry mouth, study diseases of the salivary glands in the lab and test potential new drugs on human salivary tissue,” Andreadis says.

Other participating researchers in this study included graduate student Sai Harsha Bhamidipati in the UB Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering; Kihoon Nam, Frank Maslow and Travis Small, with the University of Missouri; and Yali Zhang, Jianmin Wang, and Song Liu, with the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.