Employers would no longer have the right to attain a prospective employee’s credit report, or to deny a job applicant based on credit status, under a bill introduced Tuesday in the US Senate.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and six other senators proposed the Equal Employment for All Act, which would aim to end the ability of employers to run credit checks on possible employees, currently a common practice.
Advocates of the measure says employer credit checks are a high, needless barrier of entry into the labor market for many with poor scores. Supporters add that the employer checks contribute to long-term unemployment and have disproportionately impacted women, minorities, students and seniors.
“There’s little or no evidence of any correlation between job performance and a credit [report],” Warren said Tuesday, according to CNN. “[T]his is a point of basic fairness…people who get hit with hard economic blows end up getting squeezed out of the system. This is another way the game is rigged against hardworking middle-class families.”
The think-tank Demos found in a report this year that one in ten unemployed Americans were denied a job based on credit status. Demos said the report evaluations target anywhere from entry-level positions to senior management staff.
