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Finding a job in this economy is hard enough. It's harder if you're discriminated against. And there are a lot of reasons people are discriminated against,
especially in this economy, with employers feeling like they can be as picky as they like.
The New York Times supports the Fair Employment Opportunity Act of 2011, which would prevent employers from refusing to consider people just because they were unemployed and from saying in job postings that the unemployed would not be considered, in an editorial. According to an accompanying article:
Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.
The practice is common enough that New Jersey recently passed a law outlawing job ads that bar unemployed workers from applying. New York and Michigan are considering the idea, and similar legislation has been introduced in Congress. The National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit organization that studies the labor market and helps the unemployed apply for benefits, has been reviewing the issue, and last week issued a report that has nudged more politicians to condemn these ads.
Given the unlikelihood that such a bill will get through Congress, pushing it in the states is probably the best hope for unemployed jobseekers to have a fair shot.
The EEOC is also looking into discrimination based on criminal background checks. Employers are supposed to consider the "age, seriousness, and relevance" of someone's criminal record in hiring decisions. But not all do—some just eliminate everyone with a record, no matter how minor or long ago. This could mean that anyone with a minor conviction in their past—having been caught with a joint or having done something stupid when you were young—could suffer on the job market for the rest of their life.
Disproportionate racial impacts are another major issue with this:
Communities of color are particularly hard hit by the expanded use of criminal background checks by employers, which exacerbates the already severe effects of the recent economic downturn and anemic recovery to date. The average unemployment rate in 2010 for blacks was 16 percent, compared with 8.7 percent for whites and 12.5 percent for Hispanics. The widespread use of background checks only adds to the historic challenges that African Americans continue to face in finding equal opportunity in employment.
In short, on top of the automatic difficulty of finding a job when there's 9.2% unemployment, you're extra screwed if you're unemployed, if you have a criminal record, if you're black or Latino. And probably the best we can hope for from this Congress is that House Republicans don't go after the EEOC if it tries to curb discrimination.