Its shit pay but it's still work. Experienced that for 90 days.

- such as working on your GED or attending substance abuse treatment. Every inmate is required to have some kind of 'job' (this can be understood as scheduled activity) during the day.

Some involve financial compensation - most jobs don't. And, as someone who has worked in the prisons - at least in FL - those physical jobs are often silly (50 men get called up to the front for a job called 'inside grounds' - 2 or 3 get picked. The rest spend ALL day in the dorm. The 2-3 walk around and weed some of the higher weeds - I mean pluck them, this is not traditional weeding - for 1 hour.)

I know folks are angry about the paid jobs in prison. There are some - albeit only a few - positions that require real labor that are, as you note, paid at pennies on the dollar.

But the reality of prison is that the bigger problem is that in prison most folks sit on their bunks, all day, every day.

Men and women who are incarcerated need programming throughout the day. That takes significant $.

and now the 99% are scrambling for crumbs. The firewall protecting the rich white upper 1% is tenuous as we still have a vote and their tactic of breeding discord between blacks and whites, men vs women, between the middle class and underclass is teetering. The thought of a blue wave 2018, 2020, 2022 has them for the first time feeling fear. The only trick left to play, is manipulating elections and voting rights.... and that should be our concern. Why we need to take back state govt especially the Secretary of State office which have dominum over voting.

children and retired adults, while we're at it...
really get that percentage up.

One is unable to work at Home Depot, or the car wash from inside a prison.

I was intentionally using a ridiculous example.

No reason why work release programs couldn’t be implemented.

why most prisoners aren't on work release.

but I’m sure you are convinced that our vast prison population is filled with people, probably people you would describe as ‘animals’, who would rape and pillage given any chance to do so.

You have to be over 16, but there's not actually an upper age limit. If an 80-year-old answered the survey that he was out of work but looking for work and would accept a job offer, that would count as "unemployed".

There are currently 161 million in the work force, of whom 5.9 million are unemployed, giving the current rate of 3.6% unemployment.

Adding 2.5 million to the ranks of unemployed would raise the work force to 163.5 million and unemployed to 8.4 million, creating an unemployment rate of 5.1%

I'm assuming that prisoners are not included as being in the work force. If they are then the numbers would be 161 million and 8.4 million respectfully, and there would be a 5.2% unemployment rate.

What's actually shocking is the 161 million in the work force. The BLS claims the total population of the US in 2018 as 258.3 million, and the work force as 162 million, for a percentage of merely 62% of the total population in the workforce. Since the total population of the US is over 310 million, I think their wording is a bit off, and they mean that the working age population is 258 million, but...

"Institutions" would include prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, and so on.

We incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than do dictatorship nation, totalitarian nations, nations undergoing civil war...

We incarcerate a higher rate of our population than nations which make no pretense of democracy.

That is a horrible and utterly damning fact all by itself. It doesn't need any sophomoric issues like that it is "hiding inequality" or "artificially lowering unemployment rates." We are a democratic nation which imprisons its people at a rate which would embarrass Idi Amin, and we don't even bother to mention it, let alone apologize for it.