Washington —- When the Labor Department announces May employment figures today, the jobless rate likely will be about 5 percent, only half the level reached in the 1981-82 recession.

Given that home builders aren't hiring, auto companies are laying off legions and Americans lack confidence in the economy, why isn't the unemployment rate higher?

Economists cite several reasons, but some believe one factor often is overlooked: Prisons are keeping so many people out of the labor market that the true jobless rate is being partly masked.

"Incarceration rates have gone up enormously in the last 20 years," said Rebecca Blank, an economist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a centrist research group.

"We're jailing a lot more people now," which is keeping them from competing for the low-skilled manufacturing jobs that have grown scarce, she said.

Between 1980 and 2006, the number of people in prison in this country jumped from 420,000 to more than 2 million, she said. A recent study by the Pew Center on the States found that one in every 100 U.S. adults is now incarcerated.

In 2006, the most recent year Blank's research covers, the 4.6 percent U.S. unemployment rate would have been 5 percent if people behind bars and in the armed forces had been seeking private sector jobs and therefore counted in the unemployment statistics, she said. Among black men, the rate would have pushed up from 9.6 percent to 10.6 percent.

"We have disproportionately taken young men of color out of the work force" with stiffer penalties for drug law violations, she said.

A 2005 study in the American Journal of Sociology said that by 1999, more than 40 percent of young black male high school dropouts were in prison or jail, compared with 10.3 percent of young white male dropouts.

"There hasn't been a marked change in behaviors" in terms of drug use since the early 1980s, Blank said. "What has changed is public policy" involving drug-related prison sentences.

The labor market effects don't end when people are released from prison, she said. "It has a huge impact by closing off employment opportunities" for people who might otherwise seek work as a security guard, cashier or other position that requires trust. "Many employers can't hire people with a prison record," she said.

That means former prisoners often have longer stretches of unemployment and typically earn lower wages when they find work, making them less committed to staying in the work force, she said.

But not everyone agrees that the nation's high incarceration rate has an impact on employment. James Sherk, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, says the unemployment rate is low simply because the labor market remains tight, with many employers seeking even low-skilled workers.

If people now incarcerated under tough drug laws had never been put into prison, the great majority of them could have found jobs if they had wanted them, he said.

Attributing the low unemployment rate to the high incarceration rate is "grasping at straws," he said.

Peter Morici, a University of Maryland economics professor who describes himself as "a pretty conservative guy," agrees with Blank that tougher sentencing policies help mask a weak job market, especially for people lacking higher educations.

Sentencing drug users to prison "does matter," Morici said. "If these people were in the general population, they would contribute to a higher rate of unemployment."

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IN GEORGIA

> Prison population as of Jan. 1, 2008: 55,205

> Increase from Dec. 31, 2006: 4.6 percent

> Proportion of state residents behind bars: 1 in 97.9

> 2005 national rank by incarceration rate: second

> Corrections spending, fiscal 2007: $998 million

> Percentage of general fund: 5.4 percent

> Amount spent on higher education for every $1 on corrections: 50 cents

> Percentage of state employees working in corrections: 15.9 percent

> State unemployment rate, April 2008: 5.3 percent