Twenty-three percent of Americans have a tattoo

From The New York Times:

Merely by glancing around, it’s clear that tattoos are no longer the sole province of gang members, garage mechanics, guys who are admirably confident that they will have the same girlfriend forever and Hollywood outliers like Angelina Jolie and Lena Dunham. Twenty-three percent of Americans have a tattoo, according to a Pew Research poll from 2010; 32 percent of those are aged 30 to 45.

Sixty-one percent of human-resource managers asked last year in an annual survey by the Center for Professional Excellence at York College of Pennsylvania said a tattoo would hurt a job applicant’s chances, up from 57 percent in 2011.

Suing over such a rejection is a dubious option. “No federal law prohibits employers from making a hiring decision because of a tattoo,” said Marc J. Scheiner, a senior associate specializing in employment law at Duane Morris, a law firm in Philadelphia. “But clearly you can’t discriminate on the basis of religion, so if someone has a religion-based tattoo, that may call for different analysis.”

“When people ask, I say there’s a mix of legal and business considerations,” Mr. Scheiner said. “Sure, companies can have a dress-code policy of no tattoos. But I tell them to consider recruitment and retention issues.”