For the second month in a row, more than one in eight American adults report having a disability.
Almost 34 million Americans age 16 years and over have a disability, according to the Current Population Survey, a monthly poll of households conducted by the Census Bureau. The figure is up by more than 4.9 million over the past three years.
Read More: Long Covid Opens a New Gender Gap With Surge in Disabilities
During the pandemic period, the share of US women in the workforce with a disability has generally been outpacing the figure for men.
Last month, that gap narrowed. A record 3.6 million men had a disability in July, while the number of women reporting one fell by 81,000 from the peak of 3.35 million reached the previous month.
The survey defines a person with a disability who has at least one of the following conditions: is deaf or has serious difficulty hearing; is blind or has serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses; has serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition; has serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs; has difficulty dressing or bathing; or has difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition.