Will he ever be able to work?

"Do you think he'll be able to hold down a job one day?"

People asked me that question about my son.

More than once. With good intentions, by people who cared about him.

There's a sister version: "Will he be able to live on his own?"

For a long time, I gave a reasonable answer. We'll see. Every child at their own pace.

I didn't yet know that the person being asked had been working for twenty-five years.

Ceiling questions

I call these ceiling questions.

A ceiling question looks open, but it already contains its limit. It doesn't ask how far he'll go. It asks whether he'll go anywhere at all.

Look at the difference. Nobody asks a nine-year-old who loves numbers whether he'll be able to hold down a job. They ask what he'll do for a living. The first question measures a floor. The second one opens a space.

That's the mechanism. Measure only the floor for long enough, and you end up installing a ceiling.

When a ceiling question comes back often enough, it eventually gets heard. By the parent first. Then by the child, who grows up with it.

A child doesn't need to be told he won't make it. It's enough for him to hear someone wonder whether he'll make it.

These questions sometimes come from professionals. Committed people, sincerely on the families' side. I don't think they mean to set a ceiling. I think they want to prepare parents, using the words that were passed down to them. A question asked with kindness still produces its effect. The parent hears it. They file it away somewhere, but it makes its way through anyway.

What I eventually understood

I spent years wondering whether my son would be able to work, because the only stories going around talked about limits, never about careers.

But during those same years, I was working. Twenty-five years in customer service, ten of them in management. I ran job interviews. I assessed candidates. I had teams under my responsibility.

I also spent those twenty-five years exhausted without understanding why. Coming home drained after days my colleagues found ordinary. Preparing for small talk the way you prepare for an exam. Wondering why everyone else seemed to have received a manual, a set of instructions, that I never got.

I was diagnosed as an adult. Autism spectrum disorder, level 1.

The answer to the question people were asking me about my son had been in front of them, and in front of me, the whole time.

The statistic and who it doesn't count

In Canada, 33% of autistic adults aged 20 to 64 are employed. The general population sits at around 72%. These figures come from the Canadian Survey on Disability, published by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

That number circulates a lot. It gets used as proof. See, it's hard.

Here's what doesn't get said alongside it.

A study published in September 2025 estimates that between 89% and 97% of autistic people over 40 are still undiagnosed. The data is British. No equivalent data exists in Canada, which already tells you something.

Do the math with me. The 33% is measured on autistic adults who have been identified. In my generation, they are a handful. All the others are working, or have worked, and appear nowhere.

An employment statistic counts the people who have been identified as autistic. It doesn't count the manager who goes home in silence after a meeting because she has no words left.

It doesn't count the technician everyone finds a bit odd, who hasn't missed a day in eighteen years.

It doesn't count the mother asking questions about her child without knowing she's describing her own childhood.

We worked our whole lives, and we were never counted in those figures.

The question already has its answer

If an entire generation of autistic adults worked without anyone knowing, then the question "can an autistic person hold down a job" was answered a long time ago.

It was answered in offices, warehouses, schools, hospitals, stores. Every day, for decades.

We contributed. We learned. We adapted, often better than what was asked of us. And we masked, for a long time.

That last point deserves to be named for what it is. Masking is work. It appears in no job description and nobody pays for it. Part of the energy my employers received from me went into looking "normal".

So when people ask me today whether my son will be able to work, I think about us. We were already there. I was somebody's autistic colleague for twenty-five years, and nobody knew.

As many realities as there are people

I want to be precise here, because this argument can easily go off the rails.

The 33% is a skewed statistic. It counts autistic adults who received a diagnosis. In my generation, they are a handful. All the others worked without ever being counted.

That doesn't mean everyone can be hired tomorrow morning. Autism is a spectrum. There are as many realities as there are people.

Some people face real barriers to employment and need support. For them, the 33% describes something tangible. Those barriers exist, and they don't disappear because others made it through. Claiming that good preparation solves everything would be insulting to the families who are genuinely fighting.

What my own path demonstrates is simpler. Autistic people have held skilled jobs all along, and nobody counted them. What we measure today is the people the systems eventually saw.

If you recognize yourself while reading this

I work with professionals. People with a career already underway, a track record behind them, an interview ahead of them.

They come to me to prepare for an interview, or for a career transition of any kind. The rest tends to come up along the way. Some have a diagnosis, others don't, and several of those who don't have been carrying the question since their child received one: they read the criteria, and somewhere in the reading, they recognized themselves.

I do not diagnose. That is not my job.

I work with the person in front of me. With how they actually function, their strengths, what drains them, and the interview they have next week or the promotion they want a few months from now. Whether or not there's a label changes nothing about what we do together.

What it does change, for you, is what you understand about your last twenty-five years.

And it changes what you can pass on to your child. You know what it's like to function in a world that wasn't always designed for you.

The question I ask today

I no longer wonder whether my son will be able to work.

I wonder whether room will be made for him.

That question shifts the gaze. It doesn't ask a child to prove he deserves a door. It asks organizations whether they know how to open one.

It also has a practical advantage: you can act on it. A hiring process can be changed. An evaluation grid can be revised. An interview can be prepared differently.

Because here's what I see in my work, from the other side of the table now. Most of the autistic candidates I work with have the skills for the job. They stumble on the skills of the interview. Decoding a vague question, holding eye contact, improvising in real time, managing a silence. These are real abilities, and they have nothing to do with the work to be done once hired.

My son, I know he's going to work. What I want to know now is who's going to be smart enough to hire him.

Frequently asked questions

What is a ceiling question?

It's a question that seems open but already contains its limit. "Will he be able to hold down a job?" asks whether the person will go anywhere, rather than how far they'll go. Measure only the floor for long enough, and you end up installing a ceiling. Asked repeatedly, these questions end up being internalized by the child who hears them.

What is the employment rate of autistic adults in Canada?

About 33% of autistic adults aged 20 to 64 are employed, according to the Canadian Survey on Disability published by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The general population sits at around 72%. This figure measures hiring, and therefore access to employment, and it only covers people who have received a diagnosis.

Do many autistic adults work without having been diagnosed?

Yes, and they are probably the majority in older generations. A study published in September 2025 estimates that between 89% and 97% of autistic people over 40 are still undiagnosed in the United Kingdom. These people have often held jobs their whole lives and appear in no statistic on autism and employment.

Is it common to discover your own autism after your child's diagnosis?

It's a very common route to adult diagnosis. While learning about their child's diagnosis, many parents recognize how they themselves function. There is no Quebec statistic on this, but it is widely reported by the people concerned and by clinicians.

Can an autistic person hold a skilled job?

Yes. Many autistic adults hold skilled positions, including in management and expert roles. The barriers are most often in the hiring process and the work environment, rather than in the ability to do the job.