This report, from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), builds off of prior CEPR research examining the population of former prisoners and people with felony convictions. The report estimates both the size and impact of this population on the U.S. labor market.

The calculations in this paper indicate that in 2014, the year for which there is the latest available data, the impediments to employment faced by former prisoners and people with felony convictions meant a loss of about 1.7 to 1.9 million workers. This was equal to a roughly 0.9 to 1.0 percentage point reduction in the overall employment rate, and a loss of between $78 and $87 billion in GDP.