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Prisons might be affecting job stats

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Prisons might be affecting job stats Friday, June 6, 2008 3:10 AM By Marilyn Geewax COX NEWS SERVICE Columbus Dispatch WASHINGTON -- When the Labor Department announces May employment figures today, the jobless rate likely will be about 5 percent, only half the level reached in the 1981-82 recession. Given that home builders aren't hiring, auto companies are laying off legions and Americans lack confidence in the economy, why isn't the unemployment rate higher? Economists cite several reasons, but some think one factor gets overlooked: Prisons are keeping so many people out of the labor market that the true jobless rate is being masked. "Incarceration rates have gone up enormously in the last 20 years," said Rebecca Blank, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a centrist research group...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).