Pretty soon, that guy ringing up your order at the supermarket may be a convicted felon who was recently released from prison. And the woman putting your burger and fries in a bag at the fast food joint may still have a drug problem.

And their employers will know of their backgrounds and not care.

That, at least, is the picture of the future from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

In the most recent Beige Book report on economic activity, the St. Louis Fed says that “some local employers have begun relaxing drug-testing standards and reducing restrictions on hiring convicted felons in order to alleviate labor shortages.”

That wasn’t, of course, in the headline. It was buried deep down in a very lengthy report that few people (including me) read in its entirety.

It doesn’t say in which cities this is happening or in what kind of businesses. But the St. Louis Fed’s district covers the Midwest and includes Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee.

I have a lot of thoughts on this and not much room to give them. So, I’ll hit the key points quickly and then let you complain that it missed some.

First, I guess convicts need to eat. So having employers who want them is a good thing. Better this than released prisoners running scams on the social-services system, as I’ve written about before, or going back to a life of crime.

Ditto for drug users. In fact, if you can’t pass a drug test, it probably means that you need a job pretty badly since there are habits to be fed.

And, of course, with the legalization of marijuana in many states either coming or already having arrived, fewer and fewer people are going to be able to pass the drug tests in effect today.

I understand all of that. Here’s what I don’t understand.

While the other 11 Fed districts didn’t mention the hiring of drug users or ex-cons, the consistent theme among the banks is that the labor markets are “tight.” That means companies allegedly can’t find workers. So it wouldn’t surprise me if what the St. Louis Fed is seeing isn’t also occurring all over the country.

But why are workers so scarce?

Is it because President Trump is chasing all the cheap immigrant labor out of the country? Or because the baby boomers — many of whom reportedly can’t afford a major car repair — suddenly think of themselves as so rich that they don’t need to work?

Maybe the stock market has created a new idle rich class of Americans. Or perhaps millions of Americans have been able to game the system and get on welfare rolls of one sort or another.

Or, perhaps, the kinds of jobs that companies are trying to fill are too skilled, or too menial, for the people who are out of work. Maybe unemployment pay — until it runs out — is a much better deal than waking up in the morning and dragging oneself to a job.

It could be that all of the above are true.

But this is also true, according to the US Labor Department: There have never been as many workers out of a job as there are today.

You can look it up. Says the Labor Department: As of April, there were 95.745 million Americans over the age of 16 who were “not in the labor force,” or as we’d say, “out of work.”

Those numbers keep rising. There were only 79.4 million non-workers in April 2008, 85.60 million in April 2011, and 93.21 million in 2015. It’s been a steady climb.

Another government statistic also seems to disprove the fact that there is a shortage of workers. The so-called “labor participation rate” in America is currently only 62.8 percent. It’s been at that level for years, something that has confounded the experts.

Before the Great Recession of 2007-2008, more than 66 percent of US adults were participating in the labor force.

So, here’s the thing. Maybe employers can’t find workers because they are unwilling to pay attractive-enough salaries. Or maybe Americans suddenly got lazy in the last decade.

Whatever’s going on, all I know is that it’s probably making ex-cons and drug addicts happy. And if they are happy and stay out of trouble, I guess I’m happy.