The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets

Kristle Cortes, Andrew Glover and Murat Tasci

No RWP 20-04, Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Abstract: Over the last 15 years, 11 states have restricted employers’ access to the credit reports of job applicants. We estimate that county-level job vacancies have fallen by 5.5 percent in occupations affected by these laws relative to exempt occupations in the same counties and national-level vacancies for the same occupations. Cross-sectional heterogeneity suggests that employers use credit reports as signals of a worker’s ability to perform the job: vacancies fall more in counties with a large share of subprime residents, while they fall less for occupations with other commonly available signals. Vacancies fall most for occupations involving routine tasks, suggesting that credit reports contain information relevant for these types of jobs.

Keywords: Vacancies; Credit score; Credit check (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 E65 J23 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46
Date: 2020-07-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets (2022)
Working Paper: The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets (2020)
Working Paper: The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedkrw:88389

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DOI: 10.18651/RWP2020-04

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