Ample experimental evidence shows that the stigma of a prison record reduces employment opportunities (Pager, 2007). Yet background checks today uncover a much broader range of impropriety, including arrests for minor crimes never resulting in formal charges. This article probes the lesser boundaries of stigma, asking whether and how employers consider low‐level arrests in hiring decisions. Matched pairs of young African American and White men were sent to apply for 300 entry‐level jobs, with one member of each pair reporting a disorderly conduct arrest that did not lead to conviction. We find a modest but nontrivial effect, with employer callback rates about 4 percentage points lower for the experimental group than for the matched control group. Interviews with the audited employers suggest three mechanisms to account for the lesser stigma of misdemeanor arrests relative to felony convictions: 1) greater employer discretion and authority in the former case; 2) calibration of the severity, nature, and timing of the offense; and 3) a deeply held presumption of innocence, which contrasts the uncertainty of arrest with the greater certainty represented by convictions. In addition, personal contact and workplace diversity play important roles in the hiring process.

Research Summary This study examines three central questions about criminal record inquiries on job applications, which is a rapidly developing area in criminology and public policy. We find the following: (1) Among the 78% of employers who ask about records, specific application questions vary greatly regarding the severity and timing of offenses. (2) Applications for restaurant positions are least likely to inquire about criminal histories, whereas racially diverse workplaces and establishments in the most and least advantaged neighborhoods are more likely to ask. (3) The race gap in employer callbacks is reduced when applicants have the chance to signal not having a record by answering “no,” which is consistent with theories of statistical discrimination. Policy Implications We conclude with a call to develop standards and best practices regarding inquiries about juvenile offenses, low‐level misdemeanor and traffic offenses, and the applicable time span. The need for such standards is made more apparent by the unevenness of criminal record questions across employees, establishments, and neighborhoods. We also suggest best practices for Ban the Box implementation to help combat potential statistical discrimination against African American men without records. Have you been convicted of a felony using your current name or any other name? If you do not answer this question, your application will not be considered. —Job application for laborer position at waste management company

Longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study is used to examine: (1) how young people establish work with self-identified career potential and how these patterns are linked to educational attainments; and (2) how adolescent achievement orientations, experiences in school and work, and sociodemographic background distinguish youth who establish themselves in careers and those who flounder during this transition. Multilevel latent class models reveal four school-to-work pathways from ages 18 to 31: two groups that attain careers through postsecondary education (via Bachelor’s or Associates-Vocational degrees) and two groups that do not (distinguished by attempting college). Multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate that academic orientations, socioeconomic background, and steady paid work during high school help adolescents avoid subsequent floundering during the school-to-work transition.

In an age of widespread background checks, we ask how managers in different organizational contexts navigate legal ambiguity in assessing applicants' criminal history information, based on interview data obtained in a recent field experiment. The study builds on institutional analyses of the social sources of workplace legality to describe how employers consider applicants with criminal histories. We find that some organizations set explicit standards to guide hiring decisions, providing concrete policies on how to treat applicants with records. Where such procedural mandates are lacking, however, hiring managers turn to a micro‐rational decision process to evaluate potential risk and liability. These individualized approaches create inconsistencies in how the law is interpreted and applied across organizations, as evidenced by actual hiring behavior in the field experiment.

Contemporary youth typically experience considerable floundering and uncertainty in their transition from school to work. This paper examines patterns of schooling and working during adolescence and the transition to adulthood that hasten or delay an important subjective marker of transition to adulthood: acquiring a job that is recognized as a "career." We use Youth Development Study data, obtained from a prospective longitudinal study of 9(th) graders. Estimation of discrete-time logit models shows that adolescent work patterns during high school, as well as the cumulative investments they make in work and schooling in the years following, significantly influence this milestone. Time-varying predictors, including job characteristics and parenthood, also affect the process of movement into "careers".