optimists may have a point. a gain of 271,000 jobs last month means that america has created 13 million jobs since the depth of a recession that wiped out 8.7 million jobs and wages are rising at a faster clip for people who have jobs. average hourly earnings in october hit 25.20 that's a gain of 2.5% compared to a year ago, the biggest increase since 2009 and significantly better than the average of about 2% since the recovery official began six years ago. good news for sure but i want to talk about a group of people who remain at a distinct disadvantage when look for work in the united states. men and women who have served time in prison or jail, former prisoners are among the larger group of some americans anyone from a misdemeanor or a felony conviction, estimates put that at 100 million or one out of three americans, disclosing a criminal record on a job application can reduce your chances of employment by almost two-thirds. that's why president obama this week ordered federal agencies to stop asking applicants right off the bat about their criminal histories. it is the first step of the federal government joining the group to ban the box, the box we're talking about is the one on the job application that if you check that means you've had a criminal record. part of what the president said in newark, new jersey. >> we're going to do our part in changing this. the federal government i believe should not use criminal history to screen out applicants before we look at their qualifications. we can't dismiss people out of hand simply because of a mistake that they made in the past. >> now it's important to say that the ban the box issue affects blacks and other minorities more than it affects white americans. that's because harsh sentencing laws have a disproportionate effect on are black americans. about 40% far greater than the 13% that blacks represent in the overall u.s. population. but no matter what a person's race, his or her chances of finding a job when released from prison will undoubtedly rise if this movement to ban the box spreads. and that could mean better lives for many of the 700,000 men and women released from america's prisons and jails every year. david ariosto has that story. >> i went through a very bad thing in my life and i didn't know how to deal with it. so the trauma, that's when i reached drug use. >> marilyn reyes started using drugs in the 1980s. marijuana, heroin, whatever she could get her hands on. in 1979 she went to prison on felony drug charges. once there she managed to kick the habit. she was ready to go on and work. >> i wanted to be self-sufficient and support my children. i tried so lard to apply and apply and apply numerous place he but i never got a job. >> she suspected but never could prove that it was the box she checked admitting to a criminal record that kept her out of work. >> hi baby it was good. >> in the two decades since leaving prison she never could get more than a part time gig. >> i could pay for rent barely, doesn't include food doesn't include clothing. >> when people exit prison they face punishment for a lifetime. >> glen martin is the founder of just leadership u.s.a, a nobody profit focused on criminal justice reform. >> to become part of the fabric of america to pursue the american dream we need to take away the criminal record. >> despite a liberal arts degree he struggled to find even menial work, turned down work as a delivery person or kitchen worker. >> that was a result of you being incarcerated recently? >> yes. >> identifying as an ex offender can reduce chances of employment by at least two-thirds and 60 to 70% of americans released from prison can't find work their first year back home. >> i don't want any person to do that to someone else yet we have a mass incarceration system where two-thirds come out and do it again. we know what works, there's enough research to tell us what works. access to labor market is what works. >> that's why 18 states more than 100 cities and counties and companies like target and walmart, have being joined ban the box. to check whether they have a criminal conviction is removed from job applications. only after job seekers are considered serious candidates will the employer run a background check. >> based on their merits then have the criminal record taken into account. >> why circulate we be giving people second third and fourth chances when they are struggling to make it in the first place? >> many people haven't had a chance to access the labor market to begin with. growing up in situations where they don't have access to quality education and that's part of what drives them into the criminal justice system. >> even that the united states incarcerates soful other americans relative to the ratio of other groups does it take it beyond discrimination based on incarceration and bleeds into the race category? >> one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime so essentially any policy based on a criminal background, one in three black men may as well not walk through your door. >> black men like brian pearson, where incarceration was a way of life. >> i won't say this but one in three of my friends are locked up. >> broke and homeless after getting out pearson found work in one of the few industries open to hiring ex offenders, construction. >> i'm a proud member of local 179. this is my job site right now. >> as a construction worker pearson makes about $25 an hour. showing up early, staying late to prove he's worthy. >> you can count on whether it is the third chance or fourth chance you can count on someone to do the right thing if given a chance. only if given a chance. >> research has shown that employees with criminal backgrounds are only slightly more productive than those without records. only eight weeks on the job pearson has already played an impression on his boss. >> if you didn't tell me ryan had a previous criminal record i would never have known, i think he's going to go far in this business. >> he's the exception not the norm. more accepting of criminal background tend to be low wage jobs with few benefits. >> those are not careers and those are not things that help people turn their lives around and stabilize their families and pay their bills in the long run. >> still some say the rules are too rigid, and can force employers to take too many risks and many are too new to conclusively prove less recidivism. but martin and other advocates continue to pass their agenda. they recently scored a victory when president obama passed an executive order to ban the box. but they want that to apply to all employers as well. >> today we ban the box in new york city. >> just last month new york city has just passed the inflation's fair chance hiring law. mayor li razmarilyn reyes share. >> i see hope for people like me who try maintain their home pay rent put food on the table. >> it was the moment she said she had been waiting for, for 20 long years. >> i am a 52-year-old woman who has never had a full time job because my past has always held me back. and today, i see light at the end of that tunnel. i see that candle flickering at me. >> marilyn finally did get that full time job she had been looking for decades. she is now a counselor. and opening up to lawsuits, that's up next. at's up next. >> ban the box is a movement that aims to help people with criminal records get legitimate work so they don't have to turn to illegal means to make money. it is banning the box that people are supposed to check if they have a criminal record but some businesses oppose bac banng the box, making companies vulnerable to antidiscrimination lawsuits. lobbying organization representing 350,000 small businesses he joins us from washington, jack we had this conversation with you earlier when we covered this topic and i'm glad that you're back with us. let's address some of the concerns that small businesses have about banning the box. let's first talk about these lawsuits. what kind of antidiscrimination lawsuits are small businesses worried about facing if they ban the box? >> well, some of the proposals that we've seen require this business owners cannot ask about the criminal history until after they've made a formal job offer and then, if they decide to rescind the job offer based on the criminal background they have to be prepared in court to argue that it wasn't only the criminal record that was the factor in your decision to rescind the offer. so it has the potential to cause lots of legal problems. >> right. >> but the real problem, the first concern for our members is time and money. our members are exclusively small business owners. >> right. >> most of them have fewer than ten employees. and they are their own hr departments. and so you know, they don't have time to sift through resumes and conduct lots of interviews and undertake a long process. they want to get all the information they can get. >> uh-huh. >> right off the bat. and home improvement contractor, and i need a sheetrocker on the job in three days i don't have time to mess around with this so i want to know right now about your record. >> right. so you're not opposed in principle to the idea but you think for companies that have hr or can handle this it's different, you think they should be able to -- banning the box should be okay in case of larger companies? >> i think that -- listen president obama is the chief executive of the federal government so he can make up whatever employment policies he wants. and we think that business owners around the country should have exactly the same latitude. they should be able to decide the policies that are best for them. that's what we think. and you know lots of small employers especially the ones in these troubled neighborhoods where you have high concentrations of people with criminal records, they're likeliest people, the likeliest businesses to be willing to hire people with criminal backgrounds. they don't have to be told this. but some business owners would like to have the information because after all, let's face it, it does tell you something about the applicant. it tells you at one point in his or her life that person had bad judgment, that person was cutting corners, that person was dishonest. and these are all qualities that we don't want in our employees. and so the employers ought to have the right to ask for the information and ali it's public information. >> yeah, yeah, i guess the i've that if some employers check your credit report and having gone through a massive recession, there's a lot of employees who say my credit report is not a good indication. as we just heard from david ariosto, if you came out with bad employment opportunities should this 50-year-old woman still be paying the price for that if you otherwise deemed her qualified to get the job and then you found out she had a criminal record? >> explain to me how this gets at the cause of the problem, which is that we have communities in which there are lots of people committing crimes and getting in trouble and having to carry that around? [simultaneous speech] closing the barn door after the horse leaves. >> she is going to get a job because new york band the box. she is now a productive member of society and she couldn't do that for the first 50 years of her life. >> we don't know that's not the reason she couldn't get a job because new york just band the box. that could be her conclusion and yours. there might be other conclusions that no one hired her. it is the business person that took the risk it is their abouts reputation that is on the line -- theirs business reputation on the line. if i'm going to send my sheetrocker into my customer's homes where he will be there alone with their money and their property i have to have a pretty good idea that he's a better person than he was and i want to know that right up front. a lot of our members, look, some of our members that i've talked to already have a policy of hiring convicted felons. they don't let that prevent them from doing so but they want the information. it is public information and so look, i can find out your criminal record. >> right. >> with a little money and some time on the internet but money and time are two things that small business owners don't have in plus. >> jack always good to talk to you about this. thank you for joining us once again, jack mosloom is director of national association of independent business. only living on the streets when they return. come up, why i'm looking at so many americans who are veterans are looking at the prospect of being homeless. g homeless. >> tough that the country gave up on me. >> look at the trauma... every day is torture. >> this is our home. >> nobody should have to live like this. >> we made a promise to these heroes... this is one promise americans need to keep. on target" an 9:30 eastern. on target" an 9:30 eastern. >> many of you know by now that homelessness is an issue about which i'm extremely passionate. if you don't live in an area where the issue faces you daily, on any given night, there were 517,000 people sleeping on the streets in this country. within that group are men and women who have served their country. talking of course about homeless veterans. homeless vets make up about 12% of homeless population. another 1.7 million vets are at risk of becoming homeless. department of veterans affairs teamed up to try to meet the goal of no homeless american veterans, that goal will not be met but homeless veterans have declined 33% but there's still a lot more to do. this weekend, al jazeera america takes olook at the work of one grat rootgrass roots organizati. here is a look at the documentary shelter. >> i went out to iraq in 2009. and we got bombed every thursday. they would lop off rocket rounds, more tar rounds, whatever they had. -- wifn of those rounds hit three or four guys and i think one of them survived, i don't really remember, kind of burnt my memory with meth to try the forget about it. but we lost three guys, three mps. you talk about numbness. when i got back i had no fear, period. i wa would walk into the middlef the hood, to get weed to try to calm me down. >> how did numbness equate with the using and eventually with thought having a home? how did that dynamic play out? >> i could have made it well if i used unemployment, i got unemployment for two years, if i used it right. to use it to quiet my fears and my feelings pretty much i could have went somewhere but i didn't. i just -- i don't know how to explain it. >> that scene is one that mark deal knows all too well. mark is the executive director of the california organization featured in the documentary veterans resource center. he joins me from sacramento. mark thanks for being with us. what makes veterans who are trained professionals trained at survival who go out there and courageously fight for their country what puts them at risk of homelessness? >> mr. velshi, it is a privilege to be here. the problems of homeless veterans are as diverse as the veterans who are homeless now. in our facilities we traditionally see veterans that are fractured their family systems, fractured their social systems that may be through drug and alcohol abuse, that may be through mental illness, posttraumatic stress disorder, as insidious as trauma, they can't operate as successfully in the civilian world and there are find themselves fracturing their social networks and they wind up being homeless. >> the white house and the department of veterans affairs realized what a tragedy this is and how serious it is and launched this effort to eliminate veteran homelessness by the end of this year. they got about a third of the way there. are they doing enough to end veteran homelessness? >> that's an interesting question. i believe the need far outweighs the current resources that are in the community. i believe that there are so many veterans that are on the verge of homelessness at the moment, it's going to be difficult to catch up. i mean just in behavioral health services alone, there's no way that the department of veterans affairs or even local communities can catch up with a need that's out there. >> cities like san francisco, los angeles have a shortage of affordable housing stock for anyone. how do you steal with veterans who -- deal with veterans who get vouchers from the va but they can't use them anywhere, they're priced out of housing? >> that's one of the biggest challenges that we have. we get a total of six supportive services for veterans grants, we were diligent to try the get homeless veterans off the street but our challenge is there is no affordable housing out there, it's a critical mass, no place to put them. we as long as the hud vash program have tons of money to get them housed and supportive services to back up making them an integral part of the community but the challenge is there's just no housing out there. california instigated proposition 41, what they did was carve out $600 million to build affordable supportive services specifically for veterans. one of the initiatives in the united states, we have just started to roll it out it's going to be two or three years that we'll be able to take advantage of the housing stock made possible by position 41. >> you know, the story that comes back all the time c is veterans who people they get the run around, they get numbers to call that just lead to more numbers to call. it's not an easy process for them. can we figure out ways that it's easier for the homeless in general and the veteran homeless population specific to get one stop shopping to solve their problem? >> the continuum of care here in sacramento has a coordinated intake process which means that if you identify as a veteran you're immediately sent to vrc who are the specialists for veterans in sacramento. most veterans are rolling out a coordinated intake process. once again cocs are phenomenal at dealing with the homeless issues in their individual communities. they know what they need. they know what the homeless need in their area. the hard part is to get the resources to back up the needs in those communities. >> when i asked you about the needs for veteran homeless, you said there are as commonalities and the largest homeless population whether it be mental illness or ptsd, substance abuse, fractured families, those are still common, there aren't separate problems that the veteran homeless community suffers that we wouldn't find elsewhere in the homeless population? >> no, i agree. i think it's the approach, i think it's the approach to the treatment, the approach to integrating these homeless individuals into your programs. you know, there's a complete culture surrounded by being a veteran. you're immersed in the culture when you start basic training and i think understanding the culture of the veteran gives you a better outcome measures at the end of their time with you. obviously what we want is we want every veteran to live the most valued life that they want to live. and the quicker that we can get to the root of the problem, the quicker that we can get to having them hope again for a better future for themselves. the quicker that they can get moving into their new life. i think it's that cultural competent piece that leaves us to integrate with those veterans quicialg and good outcome measures. >> thank you so much. mark deal is the executive director of the veterans research center, to here more, tune into shelter, 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 p.m. pacific. that's our show for today. i'm ali velshi, the news continues on al jazeera america. l jazeera america. >> on "america tonight": a survivor's story. >> why would you as a rape victim be concerned about bringing shame to your family? >> in my plong community i hmona daughter who doesn't get married to the man who raped her is seen as less than clean. >> good morning and thanks for joining us, i'm adam may, sitting in for joie chen who is on assignment. victims of c