What ADHD Costs You Across a Working Lifetime

I was browsing through some research about how we ADHD people have worse career and financial outcomes. As I look at my bank account and spend my morning searching for a job I felt a pang of recognition.

I guess it's something we all knew but seeing someone research it and putting some figures on it really hits home. The research has finally caught up with us and it's not good news.

And Adults with ADHD have lower self-esteem. All those years of corrective feedback from teachers, parents and peers gradually impact your internal narrative and do real damage to confidence, ambition and willingness to put yourself out there in the job market.

What the Research Actually Shows

Andreas Jangmo and colleagues in Stockholm studied 1.2 million Swedes after they left school. They looked at school records, medical diagnoses and tax office income figures. They checked up 6 and 16 years after graduation.

The bottom line is that adults with ADHD earned 17% less per year. They have more days unemployed and are considerably more likely to end up on disability benefits.

The gap is real. It still holds for people with the same level of schooling attainment. Then there's the self esteem issues....

There's a lot of recent research about how the self esteem in adults with ADHD is impacted. For example see the reference below about the work of Newark, Stieglitz and Elsasser where they used an assessment tool called The Rosenberg Self Esteem scale and put some simple figures on this statement.

And the self esteem tax is not what you need when you're trying to sell yourself in the job market.

Then It Gets Worse

Then I read another study by William Pelham and colleagues in Pittsburgh. They followed 364 children with ADHD compared to 240 without over a 20 year period. Looking at the figures they calculated that adults with ADHD will earn about $1.27 million dollars less across their working lifetime. And by retirement age their net worth will be up to 75% less. That makes sense if you compound the 17% reduction in pay across a career of four or five decades.

People sometimes seem to think that ADHD is just a quirky personality trait and that we just need to pull our socks up. As I've said many many times, for $1.27 million dollars, don't you think that if we could just pull our socks up, we would?

I don't want to make you depressed. Just remember - it's not your fault but hopefully there are a few things you can do to help. I've got some tools on my tools page that I really hope will help you (and me) even just a little bit.

Why Does It Happen?

We have a working memory that drops more than it needs to hold. We have time blindness that turns deadlines into something that only happens in dreamland, difficulty starting tasks; even things we enjoy, and executive control in our brains that is just running on lower power settings than people who don't have ADHD.

So every task we do needs extra planning, organising, prioritising, attention efforts and so on, which adds up to an invisible tax on everything we do.

Apply that to your job 'math' (as the Americans say 😄) and you can easily understand how the figure of $1.27 million dollars was worked out. The bigger picture starts to take shape.

And Then There Is the Job Application Itself

Every job starts with an application. So even getting off the ground and through the door has extra challenges.

We all hate filling in forms and questionnaires. A job advert and specification can be a huge document to read. Holding this all in memory while mentally scrolling through your years of work history is not an easy juggling act. And it is boring as (cuss word deleted).

The executive function tax has already shaved down your chances before the interviewer even looks at your CV.

What I Built to Take Some of the Weight Off

I can totally empathise with all my fellow ADHD people.

I'm a 60-something geezer who has managed to hold down some half-decent jobs over the years and has been around this particular block a number of times. I've used what I've learned to make some easy AI tools that I sincerely hope will help you over these first hurdles.

It wont lie for you. It won't make up content for your job applications. That would be pointless. That would land you in a job that you're not qualified for and would not be happy in. But it does all the boring bits for you.

They are simple AI prompts which you just copy and paste into your own AI. (I built them on Claude which is my personal favourite but in theory they should work on any AI). There is no charge and there's nothing that you have to download and install.

The first prompt coaxes all the education and career information out of your brain and get it 'on paper'. Then a second prompt then builds a finely tuned CV and job application notes for you. The prompt has been told not to let you get away with being self deprecating or modest.

I'm also working on a third prompt which should be available any day now, which then pulls out the information that you need to put on your linked in profile.

If you've already got a CV you can feed it into my first prompt which will then coax out any more important information and add it in.

I spent a lot of time researching what goes into a good CV and how to trigger key word searches. That is all built into my second prompt so you should see the benefit of that. It even writes your new CV in the typeface that has been identified as the most effective.

The Bottom Line

The working world is silently more expensive for ADHD'ers than for everyone else. Over the course of your lifetime this has a huge impact.

The workplace needs to understand ADHD properly and recognise that a different brain is not a worse brain. And the education needs to catch the diagnosis better.

But that is not yours to fix. All you can do is use external scaffolding to help you keep on track. That's the whole point of this blog. And I'm adding new tools all the time.

Ko-fi line: If this was useful you can support my work on Ko-fi.

References

Jangmo, A., Stålhandske, A., Chang, Z., Chen, Q., Almqvist, C., Feldman, I., Bulik, C. M., Lichtenstein, P., D'Onofrio, B., Kuja-Halkola, R. and Larsson, H. (2021) 'Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and occupational outcomes: The role of educational attainment, comorbid developmental disorders, and intellectual disability', PLOS ONE, 16(3), e0247724. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247724

Pelham, W. E., Page, T. F., Altszuler, A. R., Gnagy, E. M., Molina, B. S. G. and Pelham, W. E. Jr. (2020) 'The long-term financial outcome of children diagnosed with ADHD', Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(2), pp. 160–171. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31789549/

Cook, J., Knight, E., Hume, I. and Qureshi, A. (2014) 'The self-esteem of adults diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a systematic review of the literature', ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 6(4), pp. 249–268. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24668198/

Jellinek, M. S. (2010) 'Don't let ADHD crush children's self-esteem', Clinical Psychiatry News, 38(5), p. 12. Available at: https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/23971/pediatrics/dont-let-adhd-crush-childrens-self-esteem

Newark, P. E. and Stieglitz, R. D. (2010) 'Therapy-relevant factors in adult ADHD from a cognitive behavioural perspective', ADHD Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 2(2), pp. 59–72. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21432591/

Newark, P. E., Elsässer, M. and Stieglitz, R. D. (2016) 'Self-esteem, self-efficacy, and resources in adults with ADHD', Journal of Attention Disorders, 20(3), pp. 279–290. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23074301/

Pedersen, A. B., Edvardsen, B. V., Messina, S. M., Volden, M. R., Weyandt, L. L. and Lundervold, A. J. (2024) 'Self-esteem in adults with ADHD using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: a systematic review', Journal of Attention Disorders, 28(7), pp. 1124–1138. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38491855/