Income at Risk: Unemployment Skyrockets for Those with Disabilities, Repor...(ple with disabilities last October. Mont...),Health

BLS also reported that during September, more than two-thirds of the unemployed (36 percent) had been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

"Millions of individuals are now among the long-term unemployed," said Paul Gada, personal financial planning director for Allsup. "People with disabilities who lost jobs earlier in the recession may have spent months searching for a new job. During these months, however, their conditions may have continued to worsen, and now they physically cannot go back to work even if a job were available."

The Allsup Disability Study: Income at Risk shows that the number of people with disabilities unable to work and applying for SSDI continues to climb. Disability applications rose to more than 733,000 in third quarter 2009. This is up just 1 percent from the second quarter. However, year-to-date there has been a 23-percent increase in initial disability applications compared to year-to-date 2008.

The Social Security Administration is making headway in reducing the hearing backlog of SSDI claims. However, the number of claims pending at the application level alone is expected to reach nearly 1 million people by 2010, with the average time to process initial claims exceeding five months, according to an Allsup analysis. The SSA reports that more than 722,000 cases are
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