You don’t need a valid driver’s license to get a field job at Flagger Force. But you will need one to get promoted.

A traffic-control company staffing hundreds of work sites each day, Flagger Force employs more than 2,000 people across 11 US states. Field employees direct drivers with STOP/SLOW paddles, set up road closures, and cordon construction and utility work zones with orange cones to help keep workers and motorists safe.

New field hires don’t need previous experience and the company offers quick advancement opportunities, averaging 74 days from entry-level crew member to crew leader. Crew leaders’ roles require them to drive a company truck.

“You can’t get into a higher-paying field position if you don’t have a driver’s license,” said Shea Zwerver, Flagger Force’s workforce development and public affairs manager.

She noted that more than 20 percent of applicants responded “no” when asked on the company’s field job application if they have a valid driver’s license. Some are among the millions of Americans whose licenses have been suspended—but not for dangerous driving.

Driver’s licenses can be suspended for debt-related reasons in 25 US states. Debt-related driver’s license suspensions stem from unpaid court, traffic, or toll fees and fines. People with these suspensions often can’t afford to pay the fees required to get their licenses back. Debt-related suspensions also keep people out of the workforce. Many jobs require a driver’s license. And driving may be the only way for some to get to work.

For companies like Flagger Force, hiring and promoting licensed employees drives company growth. “Promoting employees into truck-driving roles benefits the business by increasing our capacity,” Zwerver explained. “More trucks mean we can service more job sites.”

After an initial infraction, debt piles up

Debt-related suspensions occur not because of an infraction like speeding or driving without proper insurance. A court suspends the driver’s license instead because the individual did not pay the court fees that follow the initial infraction.

Even if an initial penalty fine is relatively low, with additional nonpayment fees attached the total expense may snowball beyond the person’s ability to pay.

For example, one 2017 report noted that an initial $100 traffic ticket in California could rise to almost $500 with court fees applied, then balloon to nearly $1,000 if the driver failed to appear in court or make a payment. A court could suspend the driver’s license after 20 days of nonpayment.

A challenging economic situation for workers with suspended licenses 

With a suspended license, people may no longer qualify for or be able to get to their jobs. One study estimated that debt-related license suspension is associated with an annual median earnings loss of $12,700.

In a survey of people with debt-related license suspensions in Ohio, 64 percent said they would need to pay more than $1,000 to resolve their suspensions, according to a Legal Aid Society of Cleveland report. Ninety percent of survey respondents said they were struggling to pay the amount owed.

Notably, suspending driver’s licenses doesn’t seem to lead to greater debt repayment. For example, the Cleveland Legal Aid report shows that of the $758 million in fees and other claims assessed to Ohioans for debt-related suspensions from 2016 to 2020, only $167 million was paid back. That’s a debt recovery rate of just 22 percent.

“Debt-related driver’s license suspension actually makes it harder to collect because it makes it impossible for people to maintain their jobs and have a means to pay back court debt,” said Dylan Hayre, national advocacy and campaigns director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center.

Understanding the potential labor market impacts of debt-related suspensions

Learning more about these challenges from workforce development and legal aid practitioners in Ohio a couple of years ago, Cleveland Fed policy advisor Kyle Fee wondered what debt-related suspensions might mean for the state’s labor force.

“We hear from employers that they can’t find the workers they need, or that some of their employees have difficulties getting to work,” said Fee.

“Debt-related suspensions can potentially be a barrier to employment and economic mobility for people,” he added. “I thought, if there’s upwards of a million people having their licenses suspended annually in Ohio, that could have some significant economic impacts.”

Fee partnered with Brian Mikelbank of Cleveland State University to dig into the data. Their research demonstrated that if just half of all Ohioans with debt-related suspensions stopped driving, more than 830,000 employed or job-seeking people could drop out of the state’s workforce. Ohio’s labor force participation rate in this scenario could drop by almost nine percentage points.

In the same scenario, 17 areas in Ohio could lose more than 65 percent of their local labor force. Most of these areas are within larger metropolitan areas and have high concentrations of suspensions. But the researchers also found problems stemming from debt-related suspensions for rural areas once they factored in job posting data. Many jobs now require applicants to have a valid driver’s license, and Fee and Mikelbank found this was especially true for jobs in the most rural parts of Ohio.

Job listing data revealed that debt-related suspensions could be a particular problem for those seeking middle-wage jobs. Over a quarter of listings for these jobs in Ohio required a driver’s license, versus about 11 percent of ads for the highest-paying positions. 

Ohio workforce development experts clearly see the economic challenges debt-related suspensions introduce for workers and businesses, said Jill Rizika, president and CEO of the workforce development organization Towards Employment in Cleveland. Fee and Mikelbank’s research gave them the practical data needed to educate others on the issue.

“The research is so helpful in talking to policymakers and employers,” Rizika said.

A business gets creative to help employees with debt-related license suspensions 

Transportation and construction businesses like Flagger Force are among those most directly affected by debt-related suspensions.

“Since driving a company vehicle requires an active and valid license, we conduct a second motor vehicle record check at the time of promotion to ensure safety and compliance,” Zwerver explained.

“In some cases, we’ve hired individuals as crew members whose licenses were valid at the time of hire, but when we rechecked their records prior to a promotion into a driving role, we discovered their license had been suspended in the interim,” she said. Zwerver estimated that this has happened in at least five percent of potential promotions to crew leader.

To help affected employees, Flagger Force offers a transportation support program pairing a crew member lacking a license with a crew leader driving a company truck who can pick the crew member up. The arrangement provides a short-term solution in some cases, but only where crew leaders are amenable and live nearby.

The company also has an employee hardship fund that employees may tap to help cover challenging costs, including fee expenses to get their licenses back. To offer employees this option, though, Flagger Force needs to know they are dealing with a debt-related suspension in the first place.

“We are committed to helping people with this barrier,” Zwerver said. “But I also recognize that like any other business that wants to scale up, Flagger Force is at a point where it’s about volume and growth. Sometimes it’s hard to connect at that individual level and help people through it.”

Zwerver worries about the quality of career pathways available to workers facing these suspensions, especially if Flagger Force employees contend with the issue.

“We’re in a unique position to hire a large number of entry-level workers, but a valid driver’s license is required for field promotion,” she said. “If we as one of the more accessible entry points into the workforce still have this barrier in place, I wonder: where else can these individuals go to build a career?”

Policy and program responses to debt-related suspensions 

In some places, courts offer programs that set up payment plans instead of suspending someone’s license for a debt-related reason. The Compliance Assistance Program in Phoenix, Arizona, for example, lifted suspensions of some drivers’ licenses after assessing their ability to pay and creating individualized plans for fee repayment.

In a 2017 survey of Phoenix program participants, more than half of respondents who had been in the program for three months lost jobs after their licenses were suspended. Fifty-three percent of respondents were able to get new jobs once their licenses were reinstated.

Policymakers are also taking on the issue. As recent research highlighted data in more states about debt-related suspensions impact, governments in 25 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws around debt-related suspensions, according to the Fines and Fees Justice Center. Most recently, the Ohio Legislature passed a debt-related suspensions bill that took effect April 9, 2025.

These state laws vary in terms of which nondriving infractions no longer result in a license suspension. The laws also lay out different requirements for getting licenses reinstated and addressing any related debt.

A tough road back for job seekers made easier with legal help 

Whether or not a state institutes new regulations around debt-related suspensions, getting a license reinstated is a complex and expensive process that often requires the help of a lawyer. At Towards Employment in Cleveland, clients have access to the organization’s two-person legal team.

“It’s a matter of timing,” Rizika explained. “The whole point of a career pathway is that you’re moving at the pace that your training and job opportunities operate on. That’s not necessarily the same pace that a legal referral would operate on, so having somebody in-house makes a big difference.”

Legal director Mark Gallagher said about half of Towards Employment’s job training clients come in with an underlying driver’s license issue. His team tracks which clients have debt-related suspensions so they’ll be ready to act on their cases once Ohio’s debt-related suspensions law goes into effect this spring. “Even with this new law,” he said, “the license suspension is lifted, but the financial obligation the person owes to the court remains.”

Lifting a license suspension through an affordable payment plan marked a turning point for one recent client, Gallagher said. “She got a new job and a used car,” he said. “From that, her new career then allowed her to rebuild her relationship with her daughter.”

Addressing debt-related suspensions to benefit workers and employers

Businesses also benefit when valuable employees aren’t sidelined due to debt-related suspensions, said Maggie O’Donnell, director of policy and advocacy at Responsible Business Initiative for Justice.

“When I ask businesses and chambers of commerce what the number one issue is, it’s labor,” O’Donnell said. Large industries like trucking, construction, sanitation, and agriculture as well as rural and suburban employers are particularly affected by debt-related suspensions, she learned from her organization’s network of more than 600 business leaders.

“It seems really silly to keep people out of the workforce and put this barrier in place when we know that employers are really struggling to get employees in the door,” said O’Donnell. “Addressing debt-based license suspensions is beneficial both to the prospective or current employee and also to employers. We see it as benefiting everybody.”