Building an architecture of opportunity
Every person deserves the opportunity to contribute to society through meaningful work, to support their families and loved ones, and to build a stable, fulfilling life. However, the criminal legal system creates records of prior interaction that impact the lives of more than 70 million people in the US, creating structural barriers to employment, housing, and financial stability. These barriers persist regardless of an individual’s skills, background, or readiness to contribute. They disproportionately affect members of the Black and Hispanic communities, reinforcing racial inequities across the criminal legal system, labor market, and employment systems.
Fair access to employment supports individuals and also contributes to businesses and drives economic growth. Research shows that removing employment barriers posed by records of past interaction with the criminal legal system could add $78 to $87 billion to the US economy each year. But, beyond the dollars, this shift can also unlock human ingenuity, community strength, and intergenerational mobility at scale.
Building on progress
Fair chance hiring reforms, including Ban the Box legislation and Clean Slate policies, have made meaningful progress in reducing barriers posed by records of interaction with the criminal legal system. In Michigan, individuals who obtained an expungement were 11% more likely to secure employment within a year and saw wages rise over 20%. Missouri’s Clean Slate policy is projected to generate $2.3 billion in additional wages and nearly $3 billion in broader economic activity.
A range of non-policy initiatives demonstrate that fair chance hiring can work in practice and deliver measurable benefits. Companies like Greyston Bakery and Dave’s Killer Bread, and institutions like Johns Hopkins University have shown that fair chance hiring can improve retention, workforce dedication, and community impact.
Yet, these policies and initiatives alone cannot fully address the magnitude of exclusion created by records of past interaction. Even well-intentioned policies like Ban the Box can have unintended consequences, such as, employers relying on assumptions rather than individual qualifications, which may limit opportunities for young, low-skilled Black men. As one innovator observed:
“When you lack precise information, you default to using correlated factors and often problematic proxies like race or criminal history.” – Ryan Brennan, Rézme, Interview, 2025
Many employers are increasingly open to fair chance hiring, but successful implementation requires substantive changes to hiring systems and procedures, updating application processes, training staff, and providing onboarding and support—demands that often exceed internal capacity. Even well-intentioned employers may struggle to scale fair chance hiring without external support or structural innovations that reduce complexity and uncertainty.
Insights from our research
Our research was guided by the imperative, and opportunity, to build on existing progress and push past persistent barriers, asking, how can we move toward a reality where fair chance hiring is not the exception but the norm?
Learn more about our approach and methodology.
Over nine months, we connected with innovators, employers, intermediaries, and policy and legal experts to uncover the barriers and surface the innovations shaping fair chance hiring. From our interviews, two major learnings emerged:
First, a mindset shift is needed. It is time for a fundamental change in how society views individuals with records of prior interaction with the criminal legal system. Reducing stigma and rethinking assumptions about these individuals is critical. The moment is ripe for a large-scale shift in perspective.
“You look at the LGBTQ movement—it took decades. When I was growing up, it was very taboo. Then it started with grassroots efforts, a few court cases, slow momentum, and eventually reached a point where public perception began to shift. I want to see the fair chance movement follow a similar trajectory.” – Intermediary, Interview, 2025
Second, persistent barriers are structural and practical; they are not insurmountable. Complexity, risk, and misaligned incentives in hiring and labor markets make inclusive practices difficult to implement at scale. Overcoming these challenges requires structural innovations that change the underlying dynamics of hiring and labor markets to make fair chance hiring the norm.
Evidence shows that innovations are already advancing fair chance hiring in measurable ways. Employers, innovators, funders, community organizations, and many others are investing substantial resources, demonstrating that advancing these approaches is both feasible and impactful.
Emerging structural innovations
We have defined four models that demonstrate how fair chance hiring can move from a special effort towards a sustainable, mainstream norm.
Some models shift how candidates are evaluated, moving decisions from assumptions and proxies to skills and potential. Others introduce intermediaries—employer-led or employee-centered—that coordinate workforce support and simplify hiring processes across multiple firms. Certain approaches create new risk-sharing mechanisms that reduce liability and administrative burdens, making inclusive hiring feasible across diverse contexts. By addressing complexity, redistributing costs, and aligning incentives in practical ways, these innovations show that fair chance hiring is not only possible but scalable, effective, and capable of generating lasting impact.
Innovations with potential for structural change can produce measurable improvements in employment outcomes. Well-designed models achieve structural impact at the aggregate level of society by:
- Increasing the likelihood of inclusive hiring behaviors across contexts, independent of the individuals involved, through mechanisms that reinforce and sustain those behaviors over time.
- Changing incentives for employers, job seekers, and intermediaries so that effective and equitable options are more appealing and feasible.
To evaluate these models’ potential to achieve such impact, we developed a set of guiding questions that translate observed barriers in fair chance hiring into concrete considerations for structural validation:
- Navigating complexity: How does the model navigate the complexities of the system, and who is best positioned to do so effectively?
- Robustness: How does it maintain effectiveness under varying conditions?
- Cost-effectiveness: Who bears the costs of managing complexity and uncertainty, and how are they managed to ensure sustainability?
- Long-term viability: How is the model connected to the broader operational or revenue structures to enable long-term viability?
A successful innovation with potential for structural change must provide constructive answers to each of these questions. Different models address these considerations in different ways, and understanding these design choices was central to our evaluation.
In the coming weeks, we will share details from four innovations, each evaluated against these structural questions to understand their potential for lasting change.
- Employer Insurance – Reducing Risk and Uncertainty to Encourage Inclusive Hiring
- The SOURCE – An Employer-Led Platform Supporting Complexity Management
- Rézme – Navigating Regulatory Compliance to Focus on Candidate Strengths
- Honest Jobs – An Employee-centered Platform for Navigating Opportunities
By examining how these innovations address structural questions and outcomes they can produce, we can better understand concrete examples of innovations that could reshape fair chance hiring at scale.