Many transgender Americans face stigma and financial problems, research shows

Transgender and non-binary Americans face high unemployment rates and harassment, according to the largest study yet of their life experiences. The data reflects a long-standing pattern of discrimination at a time when states across the country have passed laws limiting their health care, bathroom access and participation in sports.

The findings come from the US Transgender Survey, which has been relied on by many researchers and policymakers since a version of it debuted in 2011. The National Center for Transgender Equality, an advocacy group, conducted the latest version of the survey in late 2022, collecting responses from more than 92,000 transgender and nonbinary Americans ages 16 and older, from every state in the country.

The group brought a preliminary analysis of responses to the survey's 600 questions on Wednesday, with the full report expected later this year.

The survey was not given to a random sample of transgender people and therefore cannot be interpreted as representative of the transgender population as a whole. The youth population is also skewed: 43 percent of respondents are between 18 and 24 years old.

Yet there were more than three times as many respondents as in 2015, the last time the survey took place executedwhen 28,000 people participated.

“You don't see these kinds of data sets,” said Sandy James, an attorney and the lead investigator of the new study, said in a news conference. “Tens of thousands of transgender people knew it was imperative that they make their voices heard.”

Many respondents reported financial problems. Eighteen percent of respondents said they were unemployed, much higher than the national rate, and a third said they had become homeless at some point in their lives. More than a quarter indicate that they have not gone to the doctor when necessary in the past year, due to the high costs.

Nearly a third of respondents in the survey said they had been verbally harassed in the past year, and three percent of respondents said they had been physically assaulted in the past year because of their gender identity.

But they also reported positive experiences. An overwhelming majority of respondents – almost 94 percent – ​​said they were more satisfied with their lives since transitioning. Of those who received hormones, 98 percent said the treatments had made them more satisfied with life.

Since the 2015 survey, state lawmakers have become significantly more hostile to LGBTQ people, with restrictions on health care for minors and adults, library books, restroom access, school sports participation and gender identification on legal documents. State lawmakers are now considering nearly 400 such bills, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Nearly half of respondents to the 2022 survey said they had considered moving in the past year because of restrictive bills passed or introduced in their state, and 5 percent said they had moved. Forty-four percent reported serious psychological problems in the past thirty days.

The results appear to be largely consistent with the 2015 findings, although the group has not yet compared the data in detail, said Dr. James.

“A stable condition, an environment, has been created in which humans cannot thrive,” said Dr. James. “And transgender people are trying to get through their lives, like everyone in the United States wants to do.”

The 2022 survey was the first to include respondents aged 16 and 17, and they included more than 8,000 of the total respondents. Adolescents were excluded from some of the other analyzes in the preliminary report, such as those relating to their experiences with medical treatments, but they will be included in the report to be published later this year.

Sixty percent of teens reported abuse at school, including verbal harassment, physical violence and online bullying, and not being allowed to use their chosen name, pronouns or the bathroom that matched their gender identity. Minors were also more likely than adults to report having family members who did not support their gender identity, and 5 percent said family members had been violent toward them because they were transgender.