How willing are Employers to Hire ex Offenders
California houses a disproportionate share of the nation's recently released prisoners, and in 2001, over a third of the prisoners released in the state returned to Los Angeles. The successful reintegration of this large group into society depends in part on the likelihood that they will find jobs. Using data from the early 1990s, we found that employers' willingness to hire ex-offenders was very limited, even relative to other groups of disadvantaged work-ers such as welfare recipients or the long-term unemployed. More troubling, employers who did not formally check criminal backgrounds tended to discriminate statistically against applicants who were black or had weak employment records.1 This earlier work left some unanswered questions. Does willingness to hire ex-offenders differ among employment sectors or by the size of the firm? Do employers who express willingness to hire ex-offenders actually do so?
Employers' willingness to hire
In answer to our survey, over 40 percent of employers indicated that they would "probably" or "definitely" not be willing to hire an applicant with a criminal record for a job not requiring a college degree. Comparisons with data from 199294 suggest little change in attitude over this decade, despite a much tighter labor market (in 1994, unemployment in the Los Angeles region was almost double the rate in 2001). In marked contrast, over 90 percent of employers indicated that they would definitely or probably hire disadvantaged workers from other groups, such as former or current welfare recipients or workers with a GED but no high school diploma.
The continued reluctance to hire ex-offenders may reflect problems in both the supply of labor and the demand for it. The incarcerated do not generally accumulate work experience and the skills they have may erode while they are serving time. Their ties to legitimate employers and to labor market networks in general are likely to be severed by arrest and imprisonment. That employers' unwillingness to hire them persisted, even in a tight labor market, perhaps reflects steady shrinkage of the pool of manufacturing and blue- collar jobs, such as machine operators and unskilled laborers, for which less educated ex-offenders were more likely to be qualified.
For employers, a criminal history may signal an untrustworthy employee who may break rules, steal, or deal poorly with customers. Employers' reluctance to hire such individuals may be prompted by law or by fear of litigation. Some occupations, such as those involving contact with children, are legally closed to people with felony convictions. And employers may be legally liable for the crimes committed by employees and so be wary of hiring those who already have a record.
Use of criminal background checks
Criminal background checks are one mechanism through which employers access information about the criminal histories of applicants, and for us they constituted an indirect means of gauging employers' aversion to hiring ex-offenders. Between 199294 and 2001, the proportion of employers claiming that they always made a criminal background check rose from 32 to 44 percent, and the proportion who said they never checked fell from 51 to 38 percent.4 The increase was especially large in retail trade, in manufacturing, in firms with over a hundred employees, and in the suburbs. Small firms remained the least likely to check. Large establishments, not-for-profits, firms with collective bargaining agreements, and firms with higher percentages of black applicants were among those more likely to check. But most of the increase in checking was driven by service firms, where, of course, most current and future employment growth will occur.Over 70 percent of employers who checked for criminal background did so before hiring, that is, before most ex- offenders had any chance to demonstrate their ability to successfully hold the jobs for which they were applying. This practice likely reinforces the barriers to employment inherent in a criminal record.
