A new study shows that nearly two in three men who are unemployed at the age of 35 have one common background -- a criminal past that creates a barrier to employment.

On Tuesday, the nonprofit RAND Corporation released its report that found 64% of those jobless males had been arrested as adults with 46% being convicted of a crime and 27% experiencing of incarceration.

Many of these men struggle to find employment even years after they served their time, a result that can be attributed to the stigma attached to a criminal conviction, said the study's lead author, Shawn Bushway. This blot on their past hurts more because of how it compounds other issues that make employment difficult to attain.

“These folks often...have an additional barrier unrelated to job skill: the ability to get a job if there’s a background check,” said Bushway, who’s also a professor of public administration and policy at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany.

Unlike other groups that are suffering amid a nationwide labor shortage, the barriers for employment faced by convicted men has been a problem for years. According to a study by the University of Michigan in 2017. applicants without criminal records were 60% more likely to get a job callback from employers even if the conviction on record was for a minor offense.

These problems are exasperated when broken down along racial lines, said Bushway. For example, Black men who are unemployed at 35 are twice as likely to be unemployed than white men and they are similarly more likely to have some criminal record.

The challenges faced by those convicted once they are out of the correction system has been a galvanizing force in recent years for criminal justice reformers. Several states have adopted “ban the box” laws that prevent employers from asking about an applicant’s past criminal records.

According to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), 15 states have mandated the removal of conviction history questions from job applications for private employers, including California, New Jersey, Colorado and others.

At the same time, these measures are challenged by studies that suggest employers are resorting to other forms of statistical discrimination in lieu of criminal background checks that has adversely affected their hiring of Americans of color.

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