Are Increased Disability Claims Contributing to Low Unemployment?

Peter St Onge, an economic research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, recently tweeted that disability claims are increasing, the effect of which contributes to a low unemployment rate.

But the graph St Onge cited shows the number of individuals identifying as disabled, not numbers of disability claims.

In reality, the total number of disabled workers and dependents collecting disability benefits actually fell from 9.2 million in 2021, to 8.8 million in 2022 (the last year for which data is available), according to the Social Security Administration. The decline isn’t a new trend: Disability claims have...