Jobless Workers Need Not Apply

A federal agency warns that some employers are excluding jobless workers from consideration for openings. The practice has surfaced in electronic and print postings, with language such as “unemployed applicants will not be considered” or “must be currently employed.” Some ads use time thresholds to exclude applicants who have been unemployed longer than six months or a year.

“At a moment when we all should be doing whatever we can to open up job opportunities to the unemployed, it is profoundly disturbing that the trend of deliberately excluding the jobless from work opportunities is on the rise,” said Christine Owens, the executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

In a public meeting at Equal Employment Opportunity Commission headquarters, several witnesses testified that excluding the unemployed from job openings could disproportionately affect African-Americans, Hispanics, people with disabilities and older workers — all federally protected groups whose jobless rates are well above the U.S. average. ◆