Exploited and Discarded: The Stark Reality of Neurodivergent Lives in America: Part 2
Review of Part 1
Part 1 exposes the systemic exploitation of autistic and neurodivergent workers in the U.S. Institutions and corporations praise neurodivergent traits such as focus, pattern recognition, innovation, but use them transactionally. Inclusion programs in tech and defense sectors often mask extractive labor practices, relying on the assumption that autistic individuals won’t leave, resist, or demand rights due to limited job access. Despite public celebration, outcomes remain poor: only 14% of autistic adults have paid work, most earn poverty wages, and many face burnout and job loss. The piece underscores a clear power imbalance: neurodivergent people are valued only as long as they deliver, then discarded. It sets the stage for Part 2 to explore the structural consequences of this exploitation.
Burnout: The cost neurodivergent people pay for their “hyper-productivity”
The inevitable consequence of this exploitation is burnout, an extreme, exhaustion. Autistic people have given a name to the crushing collapse they experience after prolonged stress or overextension: autistic burnout. It goes far beyond ordinary job stress.
In a seminal 2020 study, autistic adults defined burnout as “chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to stimulus”.
Unlike the temporary burnout a neurotypical worker might face, autistic burnout can wipe out fundamental abilities, eroding one’s executive functioning, social skills, even the ability to perform basic tasks. It is the cumulative outcome of constantly living in a world mismatched to one’s needs.
As Dora Raymaker and colleagues found, autistic burnout stems from “life stressors that add to the cumulative load” on an autistic person, combined with “barriers to support” that prevent relief. Year after year of masking autism, of pushing through sensory overwhelm and social pressures in workplaces not designed for neurodivergent brains, exacts a devastating toll. Eventually, the body and mind simply give out.
For many, autistic burnout becomes more frequent and severe with age. One autistic professional described “burning out every 2–3 years for 25 years of employment,” each episode leaving them on months-long medical leave and progressively chipping away at their functioning. Community reports like these align with clinical observations: repeated cycles of burnout tend to compound, meaning each crash is harder to recover from. Autistic adults in the 2020 study noted that burnout triggered “negative impacts on their health, capacity for independent living, and quality of life, including suicidal behavior” . In plainer terms, autistic burnout can become debilitating or even life-threatening. It is not a mere inconvenience. It can mean the difference between a semi-independent life and being unable to hold a job, or between managing one’s mental health and falling into clinical depression.
This phenomenon is not confined to autism. Other neurodivergent people, such as those with ADHD, also report crippling burnout under neurotypical workplace demands. Research confirms that employees with ADHD experience significantly higher levels of job burnout than their neurotypical peers.
Executive functioning deficits such as trouble with time management, organization, memory can make the modern hyper-paced job especially taxing for ADHD brains. The result is a similar cycle of overload and collapse. Whether autistic or ADHD (or both, as many are), neurodivergent workers often find themselves pouring exponentially more energy into daily functioning, just to achieve what a neurotypical worker manages with far less effort. Over years, that extra expenditure catches up with them.
Crucially, neurodivergent burnout is not officially recognized by employers or the medical establishment. There are no FDA-approved treatments or accommodations specifically for autistic burnout. In fact, in the United States the only medications approved for autism address acute irritability nothing targets the core autistic or ADHD traits, let alone burnout or chronic exhaustion. The standard corporate wellness offerings (mindfulness apps, generic mental health days) barely scratch the surface of what a burnt-out neurodivergent person needs.
Recovery from autistic or ADHD burnout often requires substantial time off, radical reduction of demands, and support in “unmasking” being allowed to live and work in a more authentically neurodivergent way.
Yet these are precisely the things traditional employers or institutions seldom grant. Instead, when a neurodivergent worker finally hits the wall, the response is frequently to show them the door.
From asset to liability: Being discarded after use
Neurodivergent individuals who enter institutions with optimism and ambition often end up expended and discarded. The pattern is painfully common. A driven autistic employee gives their all – their unique focus, creativity, and extra hours of labor – to a company or agency. They might even be trotted out as a success story at first. But as soon as their differences create a complication, or their productivity falters due to burnout, the institutional support evaporates. They are met not with patience or effective assistance, but with some version of “It’s just not working out.”
Autistic people who have been through sudden job loss describe it as uniquely traumatizing. One advocacy report noted that autistic employees are often blindsided by termination, left reeling and unsure what they did wrong, in part because managers rarely give honest feedback about their performance or office “fit”. Instead, organizations hide behind excuses like “restructuring” or “position eliminated”, as happened to Hea after she took medical leave for burnout.
“I often sat in offices being told, ‘We have to let you go,’ without any clear reason,” one late-diagnosed autistic woman shared, recalling how every firing felt like a bolt from the blue.
In many cases, disclosure of neurodivergence backfires the very act of asking for accommodations or admitting one is struggling can mark an employee for exit. A creative writing instructor of 19 years noted that as soon as her colleagues learned she was autistic, “they eliminated my position” shortly thereafter. There is a profound betrayal in being praised for one’s skills one day and shown out the door the next.
In the public sector, the pattern is similar. The U.S. Air Force and other military branches have begun championing neurodiversity initiatives, acknowledging that autistic and ADHD service members can offer exceptional skills. But these moves can feel like lip service when set against the military’s rigid culture. Until 2020, a diagnosis of autism or ADHD could outright disqualify one from enlisting. Even now, neurodivergent personnel often survive by masking their traits.
The RAND report candidly points out a contradiction: within the U.S. government, “neurodivergence is treated as a disability,” meaning an employee must label themselves as disabled just to get basic support in a system built for the neurotypical. Those who do come forward face stigma; those who don’t get no support at all. It’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you- don’t scenario that leaves neurodivergent Airmen and civilian analysts walking on a knife’s edge.
Yes, an autistic Air Force sergeant might be celebrated for his strategic thinking, but if his autism ever manifests in less convenient ways, say, a communication breakdown or mental health crisis, he risks being seen as a liability to be managed out. Superficial inclusion programs cannot erase deeper institutional intolerance.
“Support” measures that ring hollow
On paper, many organizations now profess to care about neurodivergent well-being. The RAND Corporation’s 2023 report, for instance, was commissioned by the Department of the Air Force to recommend how to “support and enhance the well-being” of neurodivergent personnel. Its findings acknowledge many of the right talking points: that hiring processes should be made more accessible, that work environments should be designed to accommodate sensory and social differences, and that a neurodiverse workforce can strengthen mission outcomes. These recommendations sound promising and in principle, they likely are.
Adopting “universal design” in the workplace (clearer communication, flexible scheduling, quiet spaces, etc.) benefits everyone, neurotypical and neurodivergent alike. But the reality is that most institutions stop at these surface-level adjustments. They tinker at the edges of workplace culture without addressing the core issue: exploitation.
Tellingly, nowhere do such reports grapple with the hard truth that neurodivergent people are often valued only for output, not as humans with needs and limits. The Air Force’s neurodiversity initiative, for example, might offer mentorship or awareness training, but it does not change the fundamental pressures of military life or the expectation that the mission comes first, always. Likewise, corporate autism hiring programs often provide a foot in the door, a modified interview process or a buddy system for new hires, yet once the honeymoon is over, autistic employees find themselves measured by the same unforgiving metrics as anyone else. The “support” frequently amounts to encouraging neurodivergent folks to assimilate better, rather than challenging the systemic practices that overwork and marginalize them.
As one analysis in In These Times put it, these campaigns seek to include only a “chosen few” neurodivergent individuals, molding them into a “new technical underclass” rather than truly empowering a diverse workforce. The liberation of neurodivergent people, that author argued, “doesn’t and never will depend on corporate campaigns to turn a chosen few into a new technical underclass”. In other words, real inclusion would mean questioning the very profit-and-productivity paradigm that currently exploits neurodivergent talent. And that is something neither Fortune 500 companies nor federal agencies have been willing to do.