Introduction

Disability rights have come a long way in the last 30 years. Federal laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) have reshaped access and opportunity in education and employment. Once isolated from their nondisabled peers or excluded from education altogether, more than two-thirds of students with disabilities now spend the majority of their school day in general education classrooms learning alongside their peers.¹ Disabled people are also far more integrated into the workforce since the passage of WIOA. The employment-to-population ratio for people with disabilities has risen from 26 percent in 2014 to 38.1 percent in 2025,² partly due to pandemic-era gains in remote work and other accommodations that have become more readily available.

Younger generations of workers now expect to work in fully integrated settings that provide fair wages, are supported by assistive technologies, and are accessible to all. These types of settings—known as competitive integrated employment—ensure that individuals with disabilities receive comparable pay and benefits, interact with employees without disabilities, and have the same advancement opportunities as others in similar positions.³

Unfortunately, the reality does not yet meet these expectations. Blocking the way to successful competitive integrated employment for all people with disabilities is the subminimum wage provision. This segregating and antiquated policy is an option for employers that dates back to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. While it was intended to increase job opportunities for people with disabilities, this provision (which we will call subminimum wage for short throughout this report) allows employers to pay workers with disabilities below the federal minimum wage rate. Despite civil rights laws and years of progress on workforce and labor policy, the subminimum wage still exists, with workers in some cases still earning pennies on the dollar.

Recognizing the need to change, 20 states have moved toward eliminating the subminimum wage, and our analysis last year in Pennies on the Dollar: The Use of Subminimum Wage for Disabled Workers across the United States showed that nearly all states are taking some action to address subminimum wage and help workers with disabilities become economically self-sufficient.⁴

The federal government has also announced its intention to eliminate the use of subminimum wage employment. In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor gave notice of proposed rulemaking to phase out the issuance of subminimum wage certificates.⁵ As stated in the opening of the proposed rule, “Employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities have vastly expanded in recent decades, in part due to significant legal and policy developments. Based on that evidence, the Department has tentatively concluded that subminimum wages are no longer necessary to prevent the curtailment of employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities and thus proposes to phase out the issuance of section 14(c) certificates.”⁶ Simply stated, subminimum wage is viewed in the policy world as a relic of the past and competitive integrated employment as the future.

Now, a big question remains: What happens during the transition away from subminimum wage?

In this report, we seek to address this question by examining the perspectives of those most impacted by this transition: disabled workers and their families, employers, and employment support providers. We conducted individual and small group interviews; analyzed public comments, reports, and social media posts; and updated the data analysis to re-score states from the authors’ previous report⁷ to find that while significant progress has been made, transitions can be challenging, and people affected by the new policies are managing real and perceived risks. At the same time, these perspectives can help in building better infrastructure and advancing a culture of dignity for disabled workers. To help bring more states into the fold and to spur change at the federal level, we provide recommendations on how to smooth the transition to competitive integrated employment, fair wages, and wraparound supports for individuals and families.