Bucknor, Cherries and Alan Barber. Center for Economic and Policy Research.
This report the estimates the impact of non-working felons on the employment rate and the cost to the annual GDP. Assuming a mid-range 12 percentage-point employment penalty for this population, this report finds that there was a 0.9 to 1.0 percentage-point reduction in the overall employment rate in 2014, equivalent to the loss of 1.7 to 1.9 million workers. In terms of the cost to the economy as a whole, this suggests a loss of about $78 to $87 billion in annual GDP.