The Durability Economy

Your retention metric is hiding a collapse.

 Every workforce board in the country has a 90-day retention number.

It sits in grant reports. It shows up in board presentations. It gets celebrated in press releases.

Here is what it actually measures: the minimum amount of time someone has to stay employed before a funder considers the placement "successful."

Not whether the worker is stable. Not whether the household is solvent. Not whether the job will last past month four.

Ninety days meas...

The workforce development system tracks one number: did the person get a job? But employment without household stability is a revolving door.

This piece names the blind spot that turns placement rates into vanity metrics, and asks the question no workforce board is answering.

The Number That Feels Like Progress

Across America, workforce boards are presenting their annual reports. A slide displaying the placement rate appears, drawing applause from the room. The executive director feels a se...

Your retention dashboard says the hire was successful. But the worker never made it to Day 30.

You called it a pipeline problem. It was not. It was a child care problem that no one in your hiring process ever asked about.

Full-time child care in the U.S. averaged $13,128 in 2024, a 29% increase from 2020. For single parents, that is 35% of median household income. In high-cost metros, it climbs to $25,535 per child, per year. Hold that number next to your First-Chance Hire.

They are likely a ...

Fair-Chance Hiring has expanded access to employment for justice-impacted individuals.

But hiring alone does not produce household stability. A 2Generation Workforce Economy goes beyond individual job placement to build the systems architecture ; employer retention infrastructure, household stability measurement, and cross-sector coordination ; that turns a hire into lasting economic mobility for the worker and their family.

This article explains why Fair-Chance Hiring programs need to evolve ...

Retention dashboards built around placement metrics miss the most important variable in workforce durability: household stability.

When employers track hires but ignore housing, child care, and transportation barriers, talent disappears within 6 to 12 months;and leadership calls it a pipeline problem.

It is not. It is a measurement problem.

This article breaks down the ROI case for shifting from fair-chance hiring to a full 2Generation talent strategy, with data from the U.S. Chamber of Comme...

For twenty years, I lived within a system that was never meant to transform me.

It was designed to contain me.

I turned my cell into a classroom. I earned degrees from Boston University. I built the early version of what later became the Psychology of Incarceration framework.

But there was something I did not do in those twenty years.

I did not prepare to “reenter” anything.

There was nothing worth going back to. The neighborhoods had changed. The economy had shifted. The man I had become c...

Fair-Chance Hiring has opened doors for justice-impacted workers.

But access alone does not produce household stability.

When workforce systems focus on job placement without addressing the structural barriers ; housing instability, child care gaps, benefits cliffs, and disconnected services ; that surround the worker, retention collapses and the system calls it individual failure. This article examines why the architecture behind Fair-Chance Hiring must be redesigned to stabilize households...

Fair-chance hiring policies have expanded across the United States.

Yet many of these reforms leave actual hiring outcomes for people with records basically unchanged.

The fair-chance paradox occurs when organizations adopt inclusive policies without building the operational infrastructure ; manager training, retention systems, and measurable outcomes ; needed to convert policy into results. This article examines why good policies alone do not produce more hires and what organizations must bui...

I was arrested at 16. I earned my degrees in prison.

I’ve spent the last two decades watching employers announce their “commitment” to Fair-Chance Hiring.

They post the logos. They sign the pledges. They show up at the conferences.

And then they go back to the office and wonder why they can’t fill roles.

Here’s what no one in the room is willing to say:

The frame is the problem.

Fair-Chance Hiring is not a charitable act. It is a talent strategy backed by 80 million potential workers and...

Some of my greatest teachers were in prison.

They were veterans serving time alongside me, men who taught me pattern recognition by reading a cellblock like a battlefield.

Men who taught me threat detection by surviving in spaces designed to break you.

Men who taught me strategic thinking under pressure, because pressure was all we had.

At the time, I thought they were teaching me survival.

Today, I realize they were teaching me cybersecurity.

The hypervigilance that kept me safe in a si...

Every CFO in America knows how to calculate customer lifetime value.

Every operations director knows how to measure process efficiency.

Every supply chain manager knows how to track failure rates.

But when it comes to criminal justice, we suddenly forget basic economics and start talking about "redemption" and "second chances."

I'm not against redemption. I spent 20 years incarcerated. I believe in second chances.

But I also believe in spreadsheets.

And the spreadsheet on recidivism does...