As economy improves, ‘hard to employ’ get more chances
Those with disabilities, criminal pasts or little schooling may benefit.
At 49, Marshall May Jr. could not remember whether he had ever taken his mom out for a meal. Certainly not in the last 20 years when he was in and out of prison, serving seven separate terms for crimes such as stealing to support his drug habit. He last held a regular job in 1994, as a front desk clerk in a Los Angeles hotel.
But this spring, May was hired as a part-time street sweeper by Chrysalis, a nonprofit serving the homeless, and that helped him land full-time work as a health care peer specialist position for which he is now getting trained. After getting back on his feet, he took his 83-year-old mom to dinner on Mother’s Day.
“It was an incredible feeling,” May said. “I spent a lot of time at the table crying.”
As the nation’s economy improves, the low unemployment and tightening labor market have begun to open doors for people like May, who not long ago had all but given up any hopes of returning to the workplace.
Thus far the improvement for the hard-to-employ has been relatively small and spotty, confined mostly to places with exceedingly low unemployment, such as in the Midwest and Colorado, where the 2.3 percent jobless rate is the country’s lowest. The nationwide unemployment figure was 4.3 percent in May, a 16-year low.
If job growth keeps up as most economists expect, groups with historically high unemployment — people with criminal records, disabilities, low skills or little education — could make real gains.
Already, the jobless rate for adults with less than a high school diploma is down to 6.1 percent, less than half of the level five years ago and close to a quarter-century low of 5.8 percent, according to government data. For workers with just a high school education, unemployment most recently was 4.7 percent, compared with an alltime low of 3.2 percent in November 1999. These two groups represent about one-third of America’s workforce of 160 million.
The labor shortage is pronounced in booming metros such as Austin. Businesses are so desperate for workers here that they recently teamed with community colleges, labor unions and nonprofit organizations to train people for jobs such as light industrial work, nursing assistants, information technology support and office clerical help.
“We have employers more open to hiring people with criminal backgrounds than we’ve ever seen before,” said Traci Berry, a senior vice president at Goodwill Central Texas, part of the nationwide network of nonprofit community job-training and placement services.
Even in California, where unemployment statewide is typically higher than the national average, the latest jobless rate of 4.7 percent in May — the lowest since November 2000 — has begun to benefit job developers such as Chrysalis. Last year it secured positions for 2,350 homeless, ex-offenders and other long-term unemployed, up 17 percent from 2013 and double the number placed into jobs in 2008. Chrysalis’ support from private donors also is sharply higher.
“It’s great that they’re finding success now. It’s great that employers are more open to bringing them on,” said Chrysalis’ chief executive, Mark Loranger. “But I do wonder, have they really changed their attitudes on hiring people with backgrounds? ... When the economy turns on our clients, will things go back to being extraordinarily difficult?”