Congress can bolster America’s workforce

One of several crises America is currently facing is a labor shortage. And it’s a problem that will only worsen over time unless we address it. Partisan rhetoric isn’t going to save us from the demographic trends. We need Congress to focus on bipartisan solutions that get more Americans — including those who have a criminal record or have been incarcerated — into our workforce.

It’s common knowledge that American society is growing older and the pool of available workers is shrinking. The labor force participation rate — the percentage of people 16 and older who are working or looking for work — peaked at 67.3 percent in 2000 and has been declining ever since.

As of December 2022, the labor force participation rate is 62.3 percent. The Congressional Budget Office has projected the rate will decline to 59.2 percent by 2047. The last time the U.S. saw a labor force participation rate that low was January 1968. America’s population is growing at rates as low as what we had at our nation’s founding. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the number of deaths will outpace the number of births by 2043. And real GDP growth is projected to average only 1.6 percent between 2033 and 2042 and 1.5 percent between 2043 and 2052.

There’s no single policy prescription for our labor shortage, but there are thousands of Americans who want to work but who face significant barriers to employment because they have a criminal record or were incarcerated. 

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) occasionally tells a story about Brian Potaczek, who, at 19, became an addict from opioid use that began after wisdom teeth surgery; unsurprisingly, Potaczek’s addiction landed him in prison. But this story has a happy ending. As Potaczek explained in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee,  he learned to became an electrician from an in-prison training program and was hired post-release. He started the job earning $13 per hour but was earning $22 an hour just seven months later.

“I never really had goals [for] after being released from prison until I entered the program. Since then, I have rebuilt my trust with my family and friends and have regained their love and encouragement,” Potaczek explained. “I am doing things now that I never thought I would, like going to have coffee with my mom, buying Girl Scout cookies, or just giving back to the community.”

Rep. Schweikert has said, “It is stories like that that need to be part of our lexicon.” The Washington Post, when it covered Potaczek’s story, ran it with the title, “He went from jail to a $22-an-hour job. How can America get more stories like this?”

I’m happy to say that we can easily create more stories like this.

A recently published report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that no more than 40 percent of individuals released from federal prison were employed at any time during the four-year study. A 60 percent unemployment rate for individuals being released back into our neighborhoods is a grossly missed opportunity to improve lives, increase economic prosperity, and enhance public safety by providing meaningful employment to those who deserve a second chance.

More than 40 states have expungement and record-sealing laws. Although these laws vary from state to state, they are critical for helping to pave a new path for people with a criminal record to contribute to their families and our communities. The economic benefits that result from these laws are real. A recently published study by the University of Michigan School of Law on the impact of Michigan’s expungement law found that individuals whose records were expunged saw yearly wage gains of $4,295 for men and $4,594 for women. These wage gains were actually far greater than wage gains for job-training programs. Also, data from the study indicated that a serious secondary benefit of expungement is that its beneficiaries were far less likely to commit crimes than the general population.

Congress must focus on the workforce issues that America faces rather than letting the crises continue to envelope the nation.

Expanding our restrictive and antiquated federal record-sealing and expungement laws to benefit more people would have an immediate positive impact on our economy.

Providing grants to states to encourage them to create more avenues for expungement or record-sealing would also greatly improve the outlook for the nation’s workforce.

For America to achieve the economic growth we need and in order for us to remain competitive in a global economy, we must put more people to work. Thankfully, we have a large and deserving segment of our society just waiting to be given the opportunity.

Jason Pye is the director of rule of law initiatives for the Due Process Institute. Follow him on Twitter @pye