Facing a tight labor market, employers are starting to hire workers they previously considered unqualified. Once-picky companies are realizing they can’t sleep on imperfect applicants, lest their job vacancies go unfilled and profits sag. The trend is great news for those typically excluded from the job market, such as formerly incarcerated people. It’s also a victory for left-wing economists, dealing a blow to the supply-side argument that inadequate worker skills are to blame for high unemployment.

A new article in the New York Times profiles people on either side of the hiring desk, and they all confirm that corporations are diving uncharacteristically deep into the labor pool to fill vacancies. “We see employers really knocking on the door of our organization in a way that we haven’t seen in probably twenty years,” said a Minneapolis nonprofit director whose organization helps formerly incarcerated people reenter the workforce.

“Our company is looking for new ways to find pools of people just because of our hiring needs being so high,” said one recruiter, whose company in Wisconsin has just begun employing currently incarcerated people at market wages.