Former prisoners as workers<br/>

*Finding and retaining workers is harder than ever*

A friend of mine who runs a manufacturing company in rural North Carolina is genuinely perplexed these days. His complaint sounds something like this: “Where is everybody? We keep raising our pay and we just can’t get people to stay. We’re having to turn down orders because we just can’t keep our lines going.”

He’s not imagining it. Across the US there are currently more than 10 million job openings, and only about 6 million people officially looking for work. The challenge is actually trickier than that; clearly not all the 6 million officially unemployed are a match for the jobs available.

But while there may be just 6 million people “unemployed” in our country, there are a LOT more than 6 million working age adults without jobs. The government doesn’t count someone as “unemployed” unless they are actively looking for a job. And right now a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, are not looking for jobs. Some 2.9 million former workers left during the pandemic, but there seems to be more to it than that. If we can figure out why participation is dropping, then get serious about addressing the underlying causes, the short-term shortage of workers will largely go away (more in a later post on the seemingly opposite problem of our future shortage of jobs).

Since its peak in the early 1990’s the national “labor force participation rate” (or “LFP,” defined as the percentage of non-institutionalized people 16 or older who are working or looking for work) has declined from a peak of 67.3% to 62.1% in May 2023. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to millions of people who aren’t working (the exact percentages can vary widely from state to state: in North Carolina the LFP has dropped from 68.1% to a current rate of 60.6%).

The bulk of the change hasn’t come from 16-24 year olds (most of them are in school) or people over 55 (although some have taken early retirements); instead the decline has been driven by those in the so-called “prime working years” – ages 25-54. For years the overall rate held relatively steady, even as a lot of change was happening: greater percentages of women 25-54 were entering the workforce (rising from 35% in 1948 to more than 75% in 2000 before declining slightly to about 73% today); greater percentages of men 25-54 were leaving (declining slowly from about 98% to 88% today).

So how do we find enough people to do the work that needs doing? Why don’t we start by looking to the prison system?

God knows we imprison a lot of people: at any given time, about 2 million people a year are imprisoned in the US. Those incarcerated are 93% male and disproportionately dark-skinned: during the course of their lifetimes, 1/3 of all black men will spend time in jail or prison and 1/6 of Latino males, compared to 1/17 white males. In part the disparity has to do with our drug policy: about 20% of all people in prison are there on drug charges (and about twice that percentage in federal prison), and despite the fact that whites and blacks use drugs at roughly the same rate, blacks are more than ten times more likely to go to prison for drug-related offenses.

Slow the Flow Into Prison

If you are looking to find workers, the long-term play is to send fewer people to prison. Compared to western Europe, we incarcerate people at 10x the rate, with crime rates roughly the same; in fact some studies show that beyond a certain point, increased incarceration can actually increase crime rates. And it is undeniable that taking people off the grid makes them unavailable for jobs. About 400,000 of our prisoners nationally are in on drug charges: let’s start there, finding alternatives to prison for low level drug offenders. One step: Sens. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, and Dick Durbin, a Democrat, are pushing to speed implementation of a bill designed to give judges more discretion in sentencing.

Ease the Transition Out of Prison

*Folks transitioning out of jail or prison face a 27% unemployment rate*

Another solution? Make it easier for people getting out of prison to get jobs. Each year, some 600,000 people nationally get released from prison, but a range of challenges awaits them: lack of education limits job prospects for some; others have unresolved mental health or substance abuse issues; and many employers are also unwilling to hire those with a criminal record. The result? A 27% unemployment rate for those formerly incarcerated.

What could change that? Getting folks education or job training, and mental health or substance abuse training while they are in prison pays off after prison. Efforts to “ban the box” (asking about prior convictions) on employment applications mean more formerly incarcerated individuals can be judged on the strength of their skills. “Clean Slate” legislation -expunging records of people who have served their time in state prison- has passed in five states and is being considered in three more; the federal Clean Slate Act would perform a similar function for federal offenses. One in five jobs in the US requires some kind of licensing, and some licenses are prohibited to those with a record; in which cases could those requirements be waived?

All those changes will require employers to put aside some traditional attitudes, but there is plenty of evidence that hiring those formerly incarcerated can work: 85% of hiring managers report job performance of those with a criminal record to be the same or better than those without a record; others report greater job loyalty among those with a record. And the idea of looking to this workforce is one of a precious few attracting bipartisan support, with groups ranging from The Sentencing Project and the ACLU to the US Chamber and Koch industries voicing their support. Improving the prospects for the formerly incarcerated should be win-win-win, giving them a chance to compete for jobs, helping employers find workers and reduce turnover and lowering the likelihood that those released will return to prison.

Want workers? Consider those with a record.

—Leslie

What are your biggest concerns about considering formerly incarcerated individuals in your company?

(Part 2 will focus on a few other “unusual” — and important — sources of workers who could make a real difference for businesses.)

References:

Employment data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf and https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm and https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LBSSA37

US Chamber report on labor shortage: https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage

Impact of imprisonment on crime rates: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecaf.12089;https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Fewer-Prisoners-Less-Crime-A-Tale-of-Three-States.pdf#:~:text=New%20York%20and%20New%20Jersey%20led%20the%20nation,nationwide%20state%20prison

Number incarcerated: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

Prison records by race and ethnicity: https://www.profgalloway.com/incarcerated/

Incarceration rates for drug offenses: https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration

Offenses resulting in imprisonment: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html;