The axe against ex-cons is an ingrained bias that hurts competitiveness. It is an unfortunate 'reality' that it is a bias that is tolerated in America today.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/628-labor-force-pa...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/americans-not-labor...
2) The workforce participation rate number is meaningless unless you put it into context. How many people would be in the labor force that aren't currently? Is the drop because there was a lot of people retired early after losing their jobs or is it because a lot of young people gave up looking for work?
The economic improvement is undeniable. I would find better reading material then right-wing and conspiracy theorist "news" outlets.
For #2, you forgot the ones that just ran out of unemployment benefits.
It's the numbers, not the spin.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the modern definition of underemployment as education majors working as waitresses or CS majors working helpdesks or similar examples of "I was trained for a totally different field paying four times as much, or I was trained to be my bosses bosses boss, but here I am instead with a paycheck lower than some current high school students"
"The economic improvement is undeniable."
Where? Everyone seems agreed its the case for propaganda reasons, although its invariably described as "far away from here" for all personal values of "here". With the usual meaningless weird exceptions for ivy league grads of CS programs in Manhattan and SV that we all know about etc etc.
I agree. I think it is the misperception that these people are risky hires. I believe employers are very nervous about liability and simply disregard anyone that may pose a potential risk (bad credit, arrest record).