Centering Job Quality for Workers with Records

Fact Sheet February 13, 2026

Summary

Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. adults has an arrest or conviction record, and many can only secure jobs that are unstable, underpaid, and unsafe. ¹

These conditions fall hardest on Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities and people experiencing poverty, who are disproportionately targeted by the criminal legal system. ²

Although everyone deserves a good job, the current system fails people with criminal records.

Barriers such as laws that exclude people with records from certain jobs and occupational licenses, widespread background checks, and employer stigma limit access to good jobs. At the same time, community supervision requirements, criminal legal debt, predatory labor intermediaries, and other punitive structures create coercive conditions that push workers with records into taking and staying in low-quality jobs.

These barriers and punitive structures trap workers with records in cycles of economic precarity that perpetuate poverty, deepen racial inequality, and lower labor standards for everyone. Good jobs help break this cycle.

Centering job quality for people with records is critical to creating a good-jobs economy where all workers thrive. This fact sheet brings together evidence on the state of job quality among workers with records and the implications for individuals, families, communities, and economic justice.

Key Points

People with records face significantly higher unemployment rates, reduced job stability and quality, and lower wages. ³
Poor job quality and lost earnings among workers with records drain family and community resources, limit children’s future opportunities, weaken local economies, and widen racial wealth gaps, perpetuating cycles of poverty and disinvestment in over-criminalized communities. ⁴
Access to good jobs—characterized by fair pay, stability, and safety—positions workers, entire communities, and the larger workforce for long-term economic success. ⁵

Improving job quality for workers with records will require coordinated action and reform to remove barriers to employment, strengthen and enforce labor standards, and expand career pathways so that all workers can be a part of a good-jobs economy.

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Related to

Workers with Records

As of December 31, 2020, the criminal history files of the 50 states and the District of Columbia included an estimated 114,375,300 subjects (“individual offenders”). Becki R. Goggins and Dennis A. DeBacco, Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems, 2020 (SEARCH Group, 2022), table 1, https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/survey-state-criminal-history-information-systems-2020. NELP conservatively reduced the numbers cited in the survey by 30 percent to 80,062,710 subjects to correct for possible duplication (individuals who may have records in more than one state) and any counting of deceased persons. The U.S. Census population estimate for those who were 18 years and over (as of the 2020 census) in the 50 states and District of Columbia was 258,343,281. Stella U. Ogunwole et al., “Population Under Age 18 Declined Last Decade,” U.S. Census Bureau, August 12, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/united-states-adult-population-grew-faster-than-nations-total-population-from-2010-to-2020.html. Based on these estimates, roughly 80 million—or nearly one in three (31 percent)—U.S. adults have a criminal history record in U.S. state criminal history files. While this fact sheet focuses on non-incarcerated individuals with records, it is important to recognize that systemic disadvantages and labor abuses occur while workers are incarcerated. People in jails, prisons, and migrant detention centers are workers, and these institutions are workplaces that exploit them, continuing the legacy of slavery. See Resource Guide: Criminal Legal System + Work (National Employment Law Project, 2022), https://www.nelp.org/app/uploads/2022/12/Resource-Guide-Criminal-Legal-System-Work-December-2022.pdf and Anastasia Christman and Han Lu, Workers Doing Time Must Be Protected by Job Safety Laws (National Employment Law Project, 2024), https://www.nelp.org/app/uploads/2024/04/Report_Incarcerated_Workers_Disasters_v2.pdf.)
Ashley Nellis, The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons (The Sentencing Project, 2021), https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons; Leah Wang, “The U.S. Criminal Justice System Disproportionately Hurts Native People,” Prison Policy Initiative (blog), October 8, 2021, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/10/08/indigenouspeoplesday/; Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, et al., Twelve Facts About Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry (The Hamilton Project, 2016), 7, https://www.hamiltonproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/12_facts_about_incarceration_prisoner_reentry.pdf; Nazgol Ghandnoosh and Celeste Barry, One in Five: Disparities in Crime and Policing (The Sentencing Project, 2023), https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/one-in-five-disparities-in-crime-and-policing/.
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