The Role of Employment Services on Ex-Offender Fathers' Job Attainment

Purpose: The proposed study aims to examine the role of employment services in job attainment among ex-offender fathers. The increase in paternal incarceration has become a grand challenge in social work as it threatens family wellbeing in various ways. In particular, many researchers have documented that the most challenging situation that ex-offender fathers face is reentry into the labor market, which in turn, can harm their economic security, family relationships, and child wellbeing. In order to address ex-offender fathers’ employment hardships, policy makers emphasize providing appropriate employment services. Recognizing that ex-offender fathers tend to have limited education, job skills, and work experience, employment services are expected to be a critical source to increase their employability. Multiple studies have examined the effectiveness of employment services, often with a narrow interest in vocational programs provided by correctional institutions for offenders and ex-offenders. However, the efficacy of such programs is still open for debate. In addition, relatively few studies have focused on ex-offender fathers’ employment outcomes with more comprehensive interests of employment services. This study is designed to fill the gaps in the prior research.

Methods: Data are from the five and nine-year survey from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The sample includes 765 ex-offender fathers who have incarceration history at the time of the five-year survey, but have no recent incarceration history afterwards. As an independent variable, participation in employment services is measured by completing any of the following programs between the fifth and ninth-year survey periods: vocational school, program to learn job skills, and programs to help get a job. As a dependent variable, job attainment is grouped into one of three categories: no work, sporadic work, and constant work during the past twelve months at the time of the nine-year survey. Multinomial logistic regression is employed to examine the effect of employment services on job attainment, controlling for individual and family characteristics.

Results: Of 765 ex-offender fathers, 19% did not work, 38% and 44% had sporadic and constant work experience during last 12 months, respectively. The findings show partially positive effect of employment services on ex-offender fathers’ job attainment. When compared to those who did not receive employment services, ex-offender fathers who completed those services had a higher likelihood to have constant work (exp(B)= 2.96, p<.05) and sporadic work (exp(B)= 2.07, p<.10), relative to no work. However, employment services did not produce statistically significant effect on having constant work (exp(B)= 1.42, p>.05), relative to sporadic work.

Conclusion and Implications: Study findings suggest that employment services for ex-offender fathers lead to attaining more stable jobs. This result has implications for social work practitioners. Social work practitioners have advantages in directly understanding the adverse impacts of incarceration and unemployment through the array of presenting problems that ex-offender fathers and their families bring to service agencies. On the front line, social work practitioners need to more actively motivate ex-offender fathers to engage in employment services so that they can obtain secure jobs.