Will the Jobs Boom End Too Soon?

When Jack Schreiner needs more workers for his rubber-products factory in Nebraska, he frequently hires former prisoners. “I often think, There but for the grace of God go I. We’ve got a couple of folks who have been with us for some time and have been pretty darn good employees,” says Schreiner, president of Bruckman Rubber in Hastings. It’s not only charity that motivates him: Nebraska’s low unemployment rate, 2.9 percent in October, has driven him to take a serious look at applicants with blemished records. If not for that, he says, “I can’t say in all honesty that I would have been quite as open.”