Experiencing paid employment during and immediately after high school is a critical step on the path toward economic self-sufficiency in adulthood. Young adults with disabilities interested in gaining employment experiences may seek support from vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs. In this Data Note, we examine the extent to which young adults with intellectual disabilities engage with their state VR programs.

One way for assessing young adult engagement is to look at the number of them who exit the program, which implies that they either applied or were referred to the program. Specifically, we examined the average number of young adults 16 to 30 years old who exited their state VR programs between 2002 and 2011. To allow for fair comparison across states with different population sizes, we report the VR engagement rate as the number of young adults who would have exited a state VR program if that state had a population of only 1,000 people with disabilities.