Untitled Article 2025-11-07 8:18PM CST

Data emanating from major government surveys in both the United States and Canada show that, on average, individuals with a disability experience lower levels of employment than their non-disabled counterparts. Employment levels when combined with probabilities of life form the building blocks for the calculation of a work.life expectancy value. The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) as well as the American Community Survey (ACS) provide the best available government data in the U.S. by which to calculate worklife expectancy values that consider disability status. The Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) provides the best publicly available government data in Canada by which to calculate worklife expectancy values that consider disability status; however, the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) is useful in measuring trends as it is more current but not yet available for microdata computations. The purpose of this article is to describe and make comparisons between the work.life expectancy values emanating from the ASEC and ACS in the United States and the PALS in Canada.