The Reserve Army of Labour, Autistic Exclusion, and the Illusion of Full Employment

Capitalism loves to tell a story about progress. It paints a picture of inclusion, of marginalised people being welcomed into the workforce, of long-overdue recognition for those once excluded. But the reality is far messier. The system is not designed to create stability for those on its fringes; it is built to maintain precarity, to ensure that a surplus of workers is always available to drive wages down and keep the economy running efficiently for those at the top. This is the reserve army of labour—a vast and shifting pool of unemployed, underemployed, and precarious workers whose economic instability is not a failure of the system but a fundamental feature of it.

For many autistic people, the promise of stable employment has always been just out of reach. Decades of advocacy led to minor inroads, particularly in the public sector, where roles within the federal civil service became one of the few places where autistic workers could carve out careers. These jobs offered structure, predictability, and protections from the worst excesses of capitalist employment—though never enough to truly level the playing field. Now, even those inroads are being ripped away. The recent wave of sackings within the federal workforce has shown just how fragile that supposed inclusion always was. The same state that once touted its neurodiversity hiring initiatives is now casting autistic employees back into uncertainty, revealing the brutal truth: autistic workers, like so many others, are only “included” when convenient.

I know this pattern well. This is my second career in the civil service, the first being as a forensic scientist and now as a public school teacher. The so-called stability of government work is often held up as a safety net, but it is no more immune to the forces of capitalism than any other sector. Teachers, like forensic scientists, exist in a liminal space—technically employed, yet always at risk of funding cuts, policy shifts, or economic downturns that suddenly render their positions expendable. Meanwhile, the broader economic system functions to keep autistic workers, whether in the private or public sector, cycling through instability.

Much of this instability is deliberately obscured. The state and corporate media work together to craft a narrative of economic health, one that relies on misleading unemployment statistics to downplay the true scale of joblessness and precarity. The official unemployment rate, known as U3, only counts those who are actively seeking work in the past four weeks—conveniently excluding those who have given up looking, those in part-time roles desperate for full-time hours, and those trapped in the gig economy with no real security. The broader U6 measure, which includes some of these workers, is rarely discussed in mainstream economic reporting, whilst alternative statistics that attempt to account for all those left behind are dismissed as fringe or unreliable. This manipulation serves a purpose: to uphold the illusion that capitalism is functioning, that job markets are strong, that those who remain unemployed or underemployed must simply not be trying hard enough.

For autistic workers, this illusion is particularly cruel. Many of us have already been conditioned by learned helplessness, a phenomenon I explored in my previous article, where repeated systemic failures teach individuals that effort is futile. Autistic students who are left to flounder in unsupportive educational environments learn early that no matter how hard they try, they will never meet the arbitrary standards of the neuro-majority. This lesson follows them into adulthood, reinforced by every rejection letter, every inaccessible workplace, every policy shift that erases what little stability they may have had. And yet, when autistic people struggle to find work, the blame is placed squarely on them. The system creates the conditions for failure, then punishes those who fail.

The recent sackings in the federal workforce are a stark reminder that autistic employment within capitalism is never about true inclusion. It is about maintaining a labour surplus, about extracting productivity when it suits the economy and discarding workers when it does not. The reserve army of labour is not an accident, and autistic people, like so many other marginalised groups, are trapped within it by design. The question is not why autistic workers struggle to find employment—it is why capitalism ensures that they never truly escape precarity.

What is the Reserve Army of Labour?

Karl Marx described the reserve army of labour as the mass of unemployed, underemployed, and precariously employed workers whose very existence functions to discipline the workforce. This surplus labour pool is not just an unfortunate byproduct of capitalism—it is an intentional mechanism, ensuring that there are always more workers than jobs, allowing employers to drive down wages, suppress worker demands, and maintain control over the economic system. When workers fear losing their jobs, they are less likely to organise, less likely to demand fair conditions, and more likely to accept whatever scraps are thrown their way. The reserve army operates as capitalism’s silent enforcer, keeping the working class in line through the constant threat of replacement.

This system does not treat all surplus workers equally. There are different layers within the reserve army of labour, each serving a distinct function in capitalist control. At the top is the floating reserve—those cycling in and out of low-wage work, often precariously employed in retail, gig economy jobs, and other industries that thrive on disposability. Many self-diagnosed autistics and those with Level 1 diagnoses exist in this layer, able to find work but never security. They are pushed into short-term contracts, unstable freelance roles, or underpaid service jobs, always on the margins of full-time employment but never truly escaping precarity. For them, autistic masking becomes a survival strategy, a way to navigate environments never built for them, even as it takes a mental and physical toll.

Beneath them is the latent reserve, those excluded from the workforce due to disability, discrimination, or other systemic barriers. Many autistics with Level 2 diagnoses find themselves here—not because they lack the ability or desire to work, but because capitalism has deemed them undesirable. Employers erect artificial barriers to keep them out, from personality tests designed to weed out those who don’t display neurotypical social traits to rigid hiring practices that filter for conformity rather than skill. I know this exclusion firsthand. At eighteen, I attempted to enlist in the US Navy, only to be permanently barred due to issues that, a decade later, would lead to my autism diagnosis. My auditory processing difficulties, my inability to sit still, my atypical way of engaging with the world—traits that were intrinsic to me, yet framed as defects—became the justification for systemic exclusion. This is the reality for many autistics: they are willing to work, often eager to contribute, but are locked out by a system that has no interest in accommodating them.

At the very bottom of the reserve army is the stagnant reserve—those who are chronically unemployed or institutionalised, written off as economically inactive. Autistics with Level 3 diagnoses are disproportionately placed in this category, often funnelled into state dependency, group homes, or care institutions that strip them of agency and economic participation. Once placed in this category, the chances of escaping it are slim. The structures of capitalism ensure that those deemed too difficult or too costly to employ are left with no options, reinforcing a cycle of economic and social exclusion.

Autistic workers are structurally positioned within this reserve army, shifting between its layers depending on circumstances but rarely—if ever—escaping entirely. Some cycle between gig work and disability benefits, others move in and out of precarious employment, and many remain permanently locked out of the workforce. This is not an accident. The barriers to employment—from algorithmic personality tests to inaccessible work environments—are not neutral inconveniences but active mechanisms of exclusion, ensuring that only those who conform to capitalist expectations are allowed through the gates. For autistics, as for so many others, the system is not broken—it is functioning exactly as intended.

How Capitalism Manipulates the Inclusion of Marginalised Groups

Capitalism has a peculiar way of embracing marginalised workers—but only when their labour is about to become obsolete. Inclusion is never about equity; it is about efficiency. The system does not offer stable, long-term participation to disabled and neurodivergent people. Instead, it absorbs them temporarily, extracting what it can before discarding them when their roles are automated, offshored, or made redundant. This cycle has played out time and time again, ensuring that marginalised workers remain on the periphery, never fully integrated into the economy, always part of the floating reserve army of labour—a disposable workforce that capitalism can pull from when needed and push aside when it no longer serves a purpose.

The pattern is unmistakable. In the mid-20th century, disabled workers were encouraged to enter manufacturing roles just as automation and offshoring began dismantling industrial jobs. Government-backed vocational schemes framed this as economic empowerment, but in reality, disabled workers were being funneled into jobs that were already in decline. Employers benefited from tax credits and subsidies for hiring disabled workers, squeezing the last bit of profit from an industry in transition before abandoning both the workers and the jobs altogether.

A similar cycle unfolded in the late 20th and early 21st centuries with clerical work. As personal computers and office automation advanced, companies no longer needed large pools of human typists and data entry clerks. But just before those roles disappeared, disabled and neurodivergent workers were pushed into them. Vocational training programmes touted typing and administrative work as viable career paths, yet within a decade, those same jobs were gone—automated by spreadsheets, word processors, and digital databases. The workers, once celebrated as part of an inclusion success story, were quietly made redundant, left scrambling for another foothold in an economy that never truly wanted them.

Now, the same pattern is playing out again with programming. For the past decade, there has been a push to funnel autistic people into coding careers. “Neurodiversity hiring initiatives” have framed programming as a natural fit for autistic minds—structured, logical, detail-oriented. Yet, at the very moment these initiatives are reaching their peak, AI and automation are making coding jobs less stable than ever. Large language models can now generate and debug code, significantly reducing the need for entry-level programmers. Once again, autistic workers are being steered into a dying industry, set up for displacement before they even establish careers. The promise of inclusion is a lie—it is a calculated delay tactic, giving the appearance of progress while ensuring that autistic workers remain trapped in the reserve army of labour.

This cycle ensures that disabled and neurodivergent workers are never truly integrated into the economy. They are brought in for a brief moment, their labour exploited under the guise of “inclusion,” and then discarded as soon as capitalism moves on. They are not given careers; they are given placeholders—temporary footholds in industries on the verge of collapse. The illusion of progress masks a brutal reality: capitalism does not seek to include marginalised workers in any meaningful way. It simply finds new ways to extract value from them before pushing them back into precarity.

Learned Helplessness as a Tool of Capitalist Control

Capitalism does not simply exclude autistic and other marginalised workers—it conditions them to accept that exclusion as inevitable. This is where learned helplessness becomes a critical tool of control. It is not enough for the system to push autistic workers into the reserve army of labour; it must also ensure that they stop resisting, that they internalise their economic disposability as a personal failing rather than a structural reality. This conditioning begins early, reinforced by an education system designed not to cultivate autonomy, but to prepare students for compliance.

Autistic students learn this lesson young. In my previous article, Breaking the Cycle of Learned Helplessness, I described how repeated academic and social failures lead many autistic students to stop trying altogether—not because they lack ability, but because they have been conditioned to believe that effort does not lead to success. They encounter rigid educational structures that refuse to accommodate their ways of thinking. They are penalised for executive dysfunction rather than supported through it. They receive little meaningful feedback beyond “try harder” or “pay more attention,” even when their struggles stem from systemic barriers, not individual shortcomings. Over time, these students internalise the idea that they are incapable of success, that no matter what they do, they will never be good enough. And so, they disengage.

This same process plays out on a broader economic scale. Autistic adults, facing repeated job rejections, workplace discrimination, and systemic inaccessibility, come to see employment itself as an insurmountable challenge. The barriers they face—automated hiring systems that screen them out, social expectations that they cannot meet, workplaces that refuse to adapt—are framed as personal shortcomings rather than institutional failures. When they struggle to find work, they are told to “network more,” “be more flexible,” or “improve their people skills.” When they are denied accommodations, they are blamed for not advocating hard enough. When they burn out in jobs that demand constant masking, they are told they should have “managed their stress better.” The system ensures that at every turn, the message is clear: if you cannot succeed, it is your own fault.

For many, the result is economic learned helplessness. Just as autistic students stop engaging in school when they see no path to success, autistic adults stop looking for work when every attempt ends in failure. They disengage from the job market, not because they do not want to work, but because they have been conditioned to believe that employment is not for them. And once they stop actively seeking jobs, they disappear from official unemployment statistics, conveniently erased from U3 calculations, reinforcing the illusion of a strong economy. They become part of the latent reserve army of labour—a pool of workers capitalism has sidelined but keeps in waiting, ensuring that the moment they are needed, they can be pulled back into the workforce under desperate, exploitative conditions.

This is not accidental. The education system primes marginalised people for learned helplessness, and the labour market cements it, ensuring that the reserve army of labour remains large and willing to accept whatever conditions capitalism demands. The lesson learned, both in school and in the workforce, is simple: you do not belong here. And once that lesson is internalised, resistance becomes much harder. Learned helplessness is not just an unfortunate side effect of economic exclusion—it is a necessary precondition for capitalism’s continued dominance.

The Unemployment Rate Lie: U3, U6, and ShadowStats

The state and corporate media maintain a careful illusion when it comes to employment. Every month, economic reports celebrate the “low unemployment rate,” using figures that seem to confirm the health of the job market. Politicians point to these numbers as proof of economic strength, as evidence that anyone who wants to work can find a job. But like most capitalist narratives, this one is built on manipulation. The true scale of joblessness and precarity is hidden behind a statistical sleight of hand, one designed to keep workers—especially those in the reserve army of labour—from recognising just how many of them have been locked out of economic participation.

At the heart of this deception is U3, the official unemployment rate, which only counts those who are actively looking for work in the past four weeks. If you are unemployed but have stopped searching—because of repeated failure, systemic exclusion, or simple exhaustion—you disappear from the statistic. If you are stuck in precarious part-time work, scraping by with fewer hours than you need, you are still counted as “employed.” U3 is not a measure of economic stability; it is a measure of how effectively the system can erase those it has discarded.

A slightly broader but still misleading metric is U6, which includes discouraged workers—those who want work but have stopped looking—as well as underemployed workers forced into part-time jobs due to lack of full-time opportunities. U6 offers a more honest picture, but it remains a sanitised version of reality. It does not capture the full scale of long-term unemployment, nor does it account for those trapped in the gig economy, forced into unstable contract work with no benefits or protections. It acknowledges that more people are struggling than U3 suggests, but still understates the depth of economic disposability.

To see the real picture, you must look at ShadowStats, an alternative measure that tracks unemployment using pre-1994 methodologies. In the early 1990s, the U.S. government quietly redefined how it calculated unemployment, moving the goalposts to artificially lower the rate. Under previous definitions, long-term discouraged workers—those who had given up looking for work after months or years of rejection—were still counted. But after the change, they simply ceased to exist in official statistics. ShadowStats reverses this manipulation, showing what the unemployment rate would look like if these excluded workers were still acknowledged. The result is staggering: while U3 might report unemployment at 4-5%, ShadowStats routinely shows figures that are double or even triple that number (it’s now at about 25%, where it’s been since the COVID high of over 35% in 2020).

For autistic people, this statistical manipulation is particularly damning. Many autistic adults, after years of job rejections, inaccessible workplaces, or the trauma of burnout, stop looking for work entirely. They are not counted in U3, disappearing from economic discussions entirely. Others, unable to find traditional employment, turn to gig work or freelancing—forms of labour that capitalism increasingly relies on but refuses to classify as stable employment. These workers remain in economic limbo, precariously existing outside traditional employer-employee relationships, yet still struggling with the same financial insecurity as the unemployed. Meanwhile, those who rely on disability benefits are framed as “outside the workforce,” even though most would gladly work in a system that was not actively designed to exclude them.

This manipulation serves a purpose. By reporting only U3, the state and corporate media reinforce the myth of a strong job market, shifting blame onto those who remain unemployed. If the unemployment rate is low, then surely the problem must lie with the individual—not with the system. This narrative is weaponised to justify cutting social supports, gutting disability benefits, and dismantling what few protections remain for marginalised workers. When media outlets claim there is a “labour shortage,” they are not advocating for better wages or conditions; they are demanding that more people—disabled people, autistic people, those previously discarded—be shoved back into exploitative jobs under the guise of necessity.

The constant moving of the goalposts is not an accident. It is a feature of capitalism’s need to obscure its failures, to maintain the illusion of inclusion while keeping the reserve army of labour intact. The autistic workers who have been pushed to the margins are not an anomaly—they are the inevitable outcome of an economic system that was never built for them. And as long as U3 remains the dominant measure of economic health, their exclusion will continue to be ignored, buried beneath a number that tells a convenient lie.

The Enclosure of Work and AI’s Role in Expanding the Reserve Army

Capitalism’s relationship with labour has always been one of control. It creates pathways for certain workers to enter the economy, only to shut those doors as soon as their labour is no longer needed. This process of enclosure—once used to seize common land and force people into wage labour—is now being applied to work itself. The rise of AI and automation is accelerating this enclosure, shrinking the number of stable jobs whilst expanding the reserve army of labour. Autistic workers, who have long been steered toward precarious employment, are particularly vulnerable to these shifts. The very industries that once seemed like safe havens for autistic workers are now being transformed by AI in ways that ensure they remain unstable, exploitative, and ultimately disposable.

For years, coding was framed as an autistic-friendly career path. The tech industry, with its structured logic and supposed openness to neurodiversity, was held up as a space where autistic people could thrive. “Neurodiverse hiring initiatives” became a selling point for companies looking to brand themselves as progressive. But just as autistic people began to carve out a space in tech, AI advancements have started to render many coding jobs redundant. Large language models like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and other AI-driven tools can now generate code, debug errors, and automate processes that once required human programmers. Entry-level jobs—the positions autistic workers were most likely to access—are disappearing first, as companies no longer see the need to train new employees when AI can perform the same tasks faster and cheaper. The promise of inclusion in tech was a bait-and-switch. Companies championed neurodiversity just long enough to benefit from the optics, only to automate those very roles out of existence.

The erosion of stable employment does not stop with tech. Across industries, autistic workers increasingly find themselves in gig work and freelance roles, not out of choice but necessity. Many cannot secure full-time employment due to rigid hiring processes, lack of accommodations, or outright discrimination. Instead, they turn to platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, or gig-based service jobs—only to find that AI is being used against them there as well. Automated bidding systems drive wages down by creating artificial competition. Algorithmic management replaces human oversight, making it easier for companies to dehumanise their workforce. AI-driven content generation tools undercut freelance writers, artists, and designers, replacing their labour with cheap, machine-generated alternatives. What was once a last refuge for those excluded from traditional employment is now being transformed into a digital sweatshop, where human workers are pitted against increasingly sophisticated algorithms designed to extract maximum profit at minimal cost.

Behind these shifts is a deeper economic restructuring. Private equity firms, which already treat housing, healthcare, and education as investment portfolios rather than public goods, are now targeting the labour market itself. By leveraging AI and algorithmic management, they are stripping away what little security remains in employment. Workers are no longer hired for careers, or even for jobs—they are treated as temporary assets, to be used and discarded as market conditions dictate. This is enclosure at a new scale: not just the privatisation of land, but the privatisation of work itself, where even the illusion of stable employment is disappearing.

For autistic workers, these changes are devastating. Many already struggle to find work in a system built for neurotypical norms. Now, even the industries where they have historically found some measure of stability are being rapidly reshaped to exclude them once again. AI is not just automating tasks—it is expanding the reserve army of labour, ensuring that more workers than ever remain desperate, precarious, and easily exploited. The narrative of technological progress disguises a brutal reality: the fewer stable jobs exist, the more power capital has over those still seeking work. And for those already on the margins, that power is absolute.

What Must Be Done? Towards Autistic Economic Liberation

The current economic system was never built for autistic people—it was built to extract from us, to condition us into learned helplessness, to shuffle us between industries just as they collapse, and to keep us locked in the reserve army of labour. If we are to break this cycle, we must stop chasing capitalist inclusion on its terms. The solution is not to demand more seats at a table designed to exploit us. It is to build something entirely different.

The first step is rejecting the treadmill of obsolete skills. For decades, autistic workers have been funnelled into industries on the verge of collapse, trained for roles that capitalism was already in the process of discarding. We have seen this pattern repeat with manufacturing, clerical work, and now programming. Instead of continuing to chase whatever skill set is currently being marketed as “autistic-friendly,” we must shift our focus toward economic models that prioritise autonomy and stability over temporary inclusion. This means stepping away from employment pathways dictated by market forces and toward systems that prioritise human well-being.

A key part of this shift is autistic-led employment solutions—economic structures that remove us from the cycle of precarity and give us control over our own labour. Worker-owned cooperatives provide a model where autistic people can build businesses together, setting their own terms instead of relying on neurotypical employers who refuse to accommodate them. Universal Basic Income (UBI) offers a way to ensure financial security outside of waged labour, recognising that not all valuable work is economically profitable. A post-capitalist framework acknowledges that autistic people thrive in different ways—ways that do not always fit neatly into job descriptions, performance reviews, or productivity metrics. And in a world where AI is automating more and more traditional jobs, we must invest in skills that cannot be automated: creative work, community care, mutual aid, and cooperative living—areas where autistic people already have deep strengths, but which capitalism refuses to value.

Beyond structural solutions, we must confront one of capitalism’s greatest lies: that we must earn the right to exist. The system tells us that dignity comes only through waged labour, that our worth is measured by productivity, and that to survive, we must prove our usefulness. But this is gaslighting on a global scale. We are not separate from nature, scrambling for permission to partake in its abundance. We are nature, and that abundance belongs to all of us—not to the few who have hoarded it through force, enclosure, and economic control.

The idea that we must “earn a living” implies that life itself is conditional, that we must toil under exploitative conditions to deserve food, shelter, and community. But no other species on Earth is forced into such an absurd bargain. A fox does not need to justify its right to the forest, nor does a river need to generate profit to keep flowing. Yet, under capitalism, human beings—especially the disabled, the neurodivergent, the marginalised—are told that we must constantly prove our worth, or be left to suffer.

True inclusion is not about finding ways to force autistic people into a system built on scarcity and exclusion. It is about dismantling the structures that have created that scarcity in the first place. We must reject the idea that employment is the sole path to dignity, and that struggling within an exploitative system is a personal failing rather than a systemic one. Instead, we must reclaim what has been stolen from us: the understanding that the Earth provides enough for all, that human worth is not up for debate, and that survival is not something to be earned but something to be shared.

This is not about reforming capitalism into a softer, more inclusive version of itself. It is about recognising that capitalism will never serve us because it was built on exclusion. It is about refusing to beg for scraps while the system thrives on our dispossession. And it is about building alternatives—ones that centre mutual care, community, and the radical truth that no one should have to earn the right to exist. Our worth is not something to be proven. It simply is.

Final thoughts …

Capitalism does not simply exploit—it gaslights. It convinces people that its structures are natural, inevitable, and beyond question, while actively erasing the knowledge that would expose its workings. The very existence of the reserve army of labour—the vast, controlled surplus of workers kept in precarity to suppress wages and maintain corporate power—is one of the system’s best-kept secrets. It is not debated in mainstream economic discussions, not taught in schools, not mentioned in media narratives about unemployment. Instead, capitalism rewrites the story: if you are struggling, it must be your fault. If wages are low, it’s because workers don’t have the “right skills.” If jobs are disappearing, it’s due to individual failure, not systemic design.

But my autistic brain was never built for this kind of deception. It recognises patterns, asks questions, and refuses to accept circular, nonsensical answers. Why are autistic people always steered into industries that are on the verge of collapse? Why do economic policies consistently prioritise market stability over human stability? Why do governments manipulate unemployment statistics to hide the true scale of joblessness? Why does the system always find new ways to keep disabled people economically vulnerable, no matter how hard they work? The answers are there, buried under layers of propaganda, waiting to be unearthed. And so I dive in. I pull apart the myths, examine the hidden mechanisms, and map out how the system keeps people trapped. The result is this rather lengthy article—one that lays bare the truth capitalism does not want people to see.

But capitalism does not just gaslight the individual—it rigs the entire flow of information. The same technology that enables me to write and share this analysis is also weaponised to ensure that work like this remains unseen. Algorithmic suppression, shadowbanning, artificial reach limitations—these are the digital enclosures of the modern era, restricting the spread of ideas that challenge the status quo. Articles like this, which expose how the system truly functions, are flagged, downranked, and buried under a sea of corporate noise. The economic machine is no longer just extracting labour; it is controlling discourse, ensuring that even as people suffer under its weight, they never fully grasp why.

This is why I am endlessly grateful when people share my work. Every share, every discussion, every act of defiance against the algorithmic censors is a crack in the system’s façade. The more people see the patterns, the harder it becomes to maintain the illusion. Capitalism thrives on deception, but its greatest weakness is truth. And the truth is, we do not have to accept its manufactured reality. We can reject its definitions of worth, refuse its cycles of disposability, and build something that serves us, not the market. The world we need does not yet exist—but together, we can create it.