Credit Reports and Employment: Findings from the 2012 National Survey on Credit Card Debt of Low- and Middle-Income Households

Today, it is common for employers to look at job applicants’ credit history before making hiring decisions. Even a cursory look at a popular job listing website reveals that employers require credit checks for jobs as diverse as doing maintenance work, offering telephone technical support, assisting in an office, working as a delivery driver, selling insurance, laboring as a home-care aide, supervising a stockroom, and scooping frozen yogurt. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) surveyed its members in 2010 and concluded that 60% of them check an employee’s credit history when hiring for some or all positions. Yet despite the prevalence of employment credit checks, researchers, policymakers, and employers understand little about what credit checks reveal to employers, their consequences for job applicants, or their overall impact on our society. This Article, drawing on new data from Dēmos’s 2012 National Survey on Credit Card Debt in Low- and Middle- Income Households, addresses these questions and finds substantial evidence that employment credit checks constitute an illegitimate barrier to employment. . .