In tight job market, Missoula employers increasingly apt to train, hire ‘ex-offenders’

With the state estimating Montana’s workforce will increase annually by 3,900 workers over the next 10 years, a Job Service specialist said Missoula employers are more and more open to hiring a felon as he or she transitions from prison back into the community.

“I tell people that employers become more open-minded as the labor force shrinks in Missoula,” Chery Sabol, workforce consultant with the Missoula Job Service, told 16 participants at an alternative workforce training session Wednesday.

By Renata Birkenbuel