Study Shows Ex-offenders Have Greatly Reduced Employment Rates

In November 2010 the Center for Economic and Policy Research released a study titled “Ex-offenders and the Labor Market,” which found that a felony conviction or imprisonment significantly reduces the ability of ex-offenders to find jobs, costing the U.S. economy an estimated $57 to $65 billion annually in lost economic output.

The study focused on male offenders, since they constitute 90% of people convicted of felonies in the U.S. It is well known that ex-prisoners in general have a more difficult time finding jobs than people without a criminal history. The goals of the study were to quantify the amount of disadvantage caused by a felony conviction and to clarify how much of that employment disadvantage was caused by factors unrelated to a criminal record – such as a lack of education, skills or work history – and how much was due solely to the effect of the conviction and/or incarceration.

The study used government statistics to estimate the 2008 working-age ex-felon population in the U.S. at 12.3 to 13.9 million. Of those, between 5.4 and 6.1 million were former prisoners while the others had felony convictions but had not served time in prison. This means that in 2008 about 1 in 17 working-age adult men was a former prisoner and about 1 in 8 was an ex-felon.

The study noted that the 2008 rates of both violent and property crimes were lower than the rates in 1980. Therefore, the dramatic increase in the ex-offender population since 1980 was not due to an increase in underlying criminal activity. “Instead, dramatic increases in sentencing probabilities and sentence lengths, especially for drug-related offenses, account for both the increase in the incarcerated population and the mushrooming of the ex-offender population,” the report found.

Therefore, “changes in sentencing today can greatly reduce the size of the ex-offender population in the future. The high cost in terms of lost output to the overall economy also suggests the benefits of taking action to reduce the substantial employment barriers facing current ex-offenders. Every indication is that, in the absence of some reform of the criminal justice system, the share of ex-offenders in the working-age population will rise substantially in coming decades.”

On average, former prisoners are far less educated than the rest of the population. In 2008, over 36% of ex-prisoners had not earned a high school diploma or GED compared to around 10% of the general population. Only 11% of former prisoners had taken any college courses compared to almost 60% of the general population.

Further, imprisonment has become racially polarized. In 2008, African-Americans made up around 40% of the prison population but less than 15% of the U.S. population. Latinos were also over-represented, making up over 20% of the prison population but about 15% of the U.S. population. This means that the employment-related effects of incarceration are more pronounced within those minority populations.