By Jill Pease
People who stutter have lower earnings, experience underemployment and express lower job satisfaction than those who don’t stutter, a new University of Florida study finds.
Led by a UF College of Public Health and Health Professions researcher, the study examined data collected over two decades from people who stutter in order to evaluate how stuttering may affect job-related outcomes over time. Findings appear in the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
Income disparities were evident at all income ranges and particularly at the $100,000 annual salary level, where people who stutter were nearly four times less likely than those who don’t to earn $100,000 or more. People who stutter were nearly 25% less likely to report being satisfied in their jobs with dissatisfaction increasing over time.
“Job satisfaction may not seem like a great indicator of employment outcomes because it doesn’t necessarily dictate your income level, but job satisfaction is incredibly important from an economic perspective, because it relates to job turnover and retention, which are important economic indicators and characteristics that create a stable, ready and productive labor force,” said lead author and health economist Molly Jacobs, Ph.D., an associate professor of health services research, management and policy. “Working Americans spend a substantial portion of their lives at work. Therefore, it was surprising to see that the majority of those respondents with stuttering had minimal job satisfaction, leading us to believe that they were most likely unhappy and unfulfilled at work.”
Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects an estimated 3 million Americans. Up to a third of young children will experience stuttering and in most cases, stuttering will resolve by age 5 or 6. Between 3% and 5% of people who stutter as children will continue to stutter as adults. While there is currently no cure for stuttering, there are treatments available to help improve speech fluency and experts suggest those treatments should continue to be made available to adults.
As young adults who stutter enter the workforce, they may select or be steered toward careers that require less verbal communication, a phenomenon known as role entrapment.
“Individuals who have or perceive themselves to have difficulty speaking or communicating may gravitate toward jobs that are not outward facing and do not require regular dialogue, contact, or discourse with others,” Jacobs said. “Unfortunately, prominent, interactive jobs that require more face-to-face communication may also offer higher compensation.”
Read the full story on the UF Health newsroom.