American workers with disabilities earned an average of 26 percent less than workers without disabilities in 2020, according to a report released on Thursday by The Century Foundation and the Center for Economic Policy Research.

The "stark pay gap" between workers with and without disabilities in the U.S. is part of what the progressive think tanks' researchers described as "pervasive discrimination and a litany of structural barriers to economic security and upward mobility."

The release of the report, titled "Economic Justice is Disability Justice," comes more than two years after COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic. Researchers described the pandemic as a "mass disabling event." An estimated one in four Americans—about 61 million—have a disability, but researchers said those numbers are likely to rise once the full impacts of the pandemic are understood.

More than three decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was signed into law, discussions about economic policies in the U.S. "have rarely included a disability lens," according to Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow with The Century Foundation.

A survey conducted by Data for Progress that accompanied the report's release said only about three in 10 American voters with disabilities think leaders in the nation's capital "care" about them.

"People with disabilities have generally been an afterthought in our economic policymaking, much less at the table," Vallas said during a Thursday virtual...

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