Survey shows lasting barriers to employment for people with criminal convictions in Ohio
Key findings
- Forty-seven percent of respondents said they had a regular job with an employer who gives them a W-2, compared to 71% of all Ohio resident tax filers who had W-2 employment.[1]
- Seventy percent reported experiencing at least one conviction-related denial of employment or getting fired from a job after a background check.
- Seventy-one percent reported having had their driver’s license suspended, compared to 22% of all licensed drivers in Ohio in 2022, according to the most recent data available.[2]
- Fifty-four percent identified jobs and employment as the most important issue, with housing selected by 19% and healthcare by 10%.[3]
The impact of criminal convictions doesn’t stop at the courtroom door. Collateral sanctions – legal restrictions tied to convictions – can make it harder to get a job, find a place to live, get an education and even volunteer in your community.
Collateral sanctions make it especially difficult to find work. Of the nearly 1,100 collateral sanctions identified by the Ohio Justice and Policy Institute in 2018, more than 850 restricted access to jobs. This included restrictions on full-time employment, licensing, contracting, and other ways to make a living.
These penalties, which also make it harder for companies to hire the people they need, cost Ohioans an estimated $3.4 billion in lost wages in 2017.[4] Employers, landlords, and others also reject candidates with criminal records even when specific restrictions don’t apply. While advocacy and legislation have since removed some barriers, many unnecessary restrictions remain.
Now, advocates are working with Ohio legislators to make it easier for people who have finished their sentences and have not committed new crimes to move beyond their past and more fully become part of their communities. Drawing on a national model championed by the Clean Slate Initiative, they want to establish a state-initiated sealing process for criminal records in Ohio.[5]
With the goal of showing how collateral sanctions impact our neighbors across the state, Policy Matters Ohio worked closely with Building Freedom Ohio to survey felony-impacted Ohioans about barriers resulting from criminal records.[6] We worked together to draft a nine-question survey which, over the past year, BFO circulated to their members and through their networks. We asked about jobs, housing, education, healthcare, childcare, transportation, and driver’s license suspensions.
Just under half of the 231 respondents identified themselves as Black, a third as white, 8% as Hispanic/Latinx and 8% as multiracial. Seventy percent were male, 30% female, with two identifying as nonbinary, third gender or preferring to self-describe. Just under 60% said they were 26 to 45 years old, a third 46-65, with the remainder either 18-25 or 66 and older. Some were directly impacted as friends and family members, providing information about their loved ones’ experiences.
Table 1
Just under half of the people surveyed (47%) said they had a job where the employer provided them with a W-2. The rest reported being self-employed, working through a temp agency, doing short-term jobs or gig work, or being unemployed. Fewer than 3% reported being retired or disabled. Data provided by the Ohio Department of Taxation show that in 2024, just over 71% of Ohio resident tax filers had W-2 employment, highlighting a disparity between Ohioans impacted by collateral sanctions and those who are not.[7] A 10% unemployment rate reported by survey respondents is just over double the average unemployment rate during the survey period of 4.6%.[8]
The racial breakdown of responses to this question shows that a higher percentage of all Black respondents said they had a job where they received a W-2 (50%) compared to white respondents (40%). Aggregating responses from people who identified as Black, Indigenous and People of Color show that half of all these respondents reported having a job with a W-2. A higher percentage of BIPOC respondents also reported being self-employed (22%) compared to white respondents (14%). A higher percentage of white respondents said they worked short-term jobs (14%) or with a temp agency (12%) compared to Black respondents (3% and 3% respectively) and BIPOC respondents (5% and 3%). No white respondents reported doing gig work, while 5% of both Black and BIPOC respondents did.
Table 2
Overall, 90 percent of survey respondents reported at least one conviction-related impact on employment or education. Eighty-seven percent reported they were denied a job, fired, or did not get called back from many of the jobs they applied for, with the remaining 13% reporting they had not experienced any job-related impact from felony convictions.[9] More than half of the 87% reporting job impact said they experienced more than one type of barrier. Eighty-three percent said they had either been denied a job because of a conviction, that an employer had reversed course and rescinded an offer after a background check, or more than one impact; 27% reported that they were fired from a job based on a conviction. Combining these three categories, 70% reported at least one denial or firing. While 57% said they had applied to many jobs without getting calls back, just over a third of those people (36%) selected that option as their only response, meaning nearly two-thirds reported impacts besides not getting called back.[10]
The racial breakdown of responses shows that similar percentages of Black and white respondents reported rescinded job offers (both 40%), although 26% of Black respondents reported being fired because of a conviction, compared to 22% of white respondents. Higher percentages of white respondents reported being told by employers that they were being denied a job based on a conviction (55% of white respondents compared to 37% of Black respondents) and not receiving callbacks (58% vs. 53%). BIPOC responses tracked Black responses closely, with 41% reporting job offers rescinded, 38% jobs denied, 29% being fired because of a conviction and 56% not receiving callbacks.
Table 3
Seventy-one percent of survey respondents reported driver’s license suspensions, showing a large disparity between directly impacted Ohioans and people who do not have felony records. The most recent data found from Ohio’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles show that in 2022, some 22% of Ohioans were living with driver’s license suspensions.[11] A new state law, House Bill 29, which went into effect in April 2025, removed suspensions for more than 400,000 Ohioans, with more than $8.3 million in reinstatement fees forgiven, according to news reports. It’s unclear how many survey participants will benefit from the law, which ends the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for failure to pay court fines or fees and some minor offenses.[12]
Sixty-four percent of Black respondents reported suspensions, compared to 79% of white respondents; 67% of respondents who identified as BIPOC reported suspensions.
Recommendations
Over the past several years, Ohio law has been updated to ease the impact of collateral sanctions, including: House Bill 29, which ended driver’s license suspensions for debt-related reasons and limited or restricted other types of suspensions and penalties; Senate Bill 288, passed in December 2022, which among other changes expanded eligibility for sealing and expungement of criminal records, particularly for low-level drug offenses; and House Bill 263, effective in 2021, which prohibited bodies that issue occupational licenses from broadly denying licenses to Ohioans based on a conviction unrelated to an applicant’s ability to do the job. More must be done to allow Ohioans to integrate and fully engage in their communities:
Renew efforts to make it easier for Ohioans to get their records sealed. The state must do the work required to lift sanctions for old records, rather than requiring Ohioans to apply — and pay — to have their records sealed.
During the last General Assembly, Ohio House Bill 460, also known as the Get Rehabilitated Ohioans Working Act, would have revised state law to allow for the automatic sealing of some criminal records, but it stalled in committee.[13] Legislators and advocates working to resurrect a new bill face challenges that may limit its benefits for people impacted by collateral sanctions, even if it is passed. This legislation is an important step, and lawmakers should prioritize it.
Re-establish the online CIVICC database, updated to reflect current law and rules. For several years, an Ohio-specific database called the Civil Impacts of Criminal Convictions under Ohio Law, or CIVICC, provided detailed information about the barriers in law and administrative policy for people with criminal records.[14] CIVICC was taken offline in 2022, eliminating a valuable tool that helped impacted Ohioans know what jobs they are eligible for before engaging in training and education.[15]
Updating and bringing this database back online, preferably under the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, would make other efforts to lessen the impact of collateral sanctions more effective.[16] HB 263, for example, has not been getting the desired results since it became effective in October 2021, as felony-impacted people often must go through extensive training without receiving any clear indication that they will be licensed until after successfully completing training.[17] They should know before they start that if they pass the training and required tests, their record will not stop them from getting the license they are seeking.
Pass HB 296, which would establish a 180-day grace period for court-ordered fines and fees for people returning to their communities after serving their sentences. This legislation, introduced in May 2025, would prohibit courts from requiring people to pay court-assessed fines, fees or other financial penalties for a period of 180 days after the person’s release from a prison sentence of a year or more, or their completion of a transitional control period. As written, this law would not apply to restitution owed to victims.[18]
Allowing people at least those six months to find employment, housing, and a sense of stability without the immediate pressure of these types of payments will help them reintegrate into the workforce and their communities. It will help victims by making it more likely that they will be paid restitution.
Conclusion
Essential as they are, these recommendations are by no means the only measures our state must take to help make sure Ohioans can truly return to civic and community life after serving their sentences.
Our attempts at reform must be stronger and more complete, and must include the voices of people who are directly impacted.
Ongoing advocacy and reform are needed to lessen the burden of collateral sanctions, provide new economic opportunities to returning Ohioans, and make our communities more inclusive and whole.
[1] Ohio Department of Taxation emailed the document “Information Request: Ohio resident filers with W-2 employment,” on August 11, 2025, in response to a request from the report author.
[2] According to Ohio BMV, 1.9 million Ohioans were living with suspensions in 2022, out of 8.7 million licensed drivers. BMV provided the first number to the Marshall Project and News 5 Cleveland for an Aug. 2023 story, “No License to Drive: Why So Many Ohioans Are Barred from Driving.” The total number of licensed drivers in 2022 was found online in a BMV document: “2022 Facts & Figures / Driver License.”
[3] For survey results on barriers to housing, see: “It was like repeatedly having a door closed in my face: Experiences of finding housing with a criminal conviction in Cuyahoga County, Ohio,” by Austin Cummins of the Fair Housing Center for Rights & Research, May 2025.
[4] Shields, Michael, of Policy Matters Ohio, and Pamela Thurston of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center. “Wasted Assets: The cost of excluding Ohioans with a record from work,” Dec. 2018. This report cannot be replicated with up-to-date information because the state defunded the Ohio-specific Civil Impacts of Criminal Convictions database the authors used to create it.
[5] See www.cleanslateinitiative.org and House Bill 460 from the 135th Ohio General Assembly.
[6] BFO is a statewide, multi-layered organization of people directly impacted by criminalization and mass incarceration.
[7] Ohio Department of Taxation, email sent on August 11, 2025.
[8] Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Ohio Labor Market Information, average unemployment rate, June 2024 through May 2025.
[9] Seven percent of respondents reported non-employment impact like education or housing, or obstacles impacting friends or family.
[10] Because participants were allowed to select more than one response, totals add up to more than 100%.
[11] See footnote 2 for the explanation of how data from the Ohio BMV were used to calculate this percentage.
[12] Kevin Accettulla, NBC 4. “More than 400,000 Ohioans see driver’s license suspensions lifted under new law,” June 11, 2025.
[13] See House Bill 460 from the 135th Ohio General Assembly.
[14] CIVICC was online at civiccohio.org; a summary can be found at the National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction.
[15] As noted in footnote 4, the 2018 report on collateral sanctions by Policy Matters and the Ohio Justice and Policy Center cannot be recreated because the CIVICC database no longer exists.
[16] Smith, Heather, Policy Matters Ohio, “Reinstate the Civil Impacts of Criminal Convictions database,” May 7, 2025.
[17] See House Bill 263 from the 133rd Ohio General Assembly.
[18] See House Bill 296 from the 136th Ohio General Assembly.