The Unemployed’s Newest Enemy: Cheap Credit Reports

As if America’s jobless weren’t screwed enough — more employers are running credit checks on potential employees for jobs that involve no financial decisions, so you’d better pay your bills on time even if you don’t have a job!

Credit checks on applicants have long been a device used by financial firms, the government and employers looking to fill positions dealing with the handling of money, but with credit reports available cheap and easily, more and more employers are using them to cast judgment on the judgment of others. So even if you’ve gone months without a job, you’d better be willing to give hand jobs if you have to in order to not fall behind on your mobile phone bill, because otherwise you might never get a damn job!

Reports the New York Times:

Once reserved for government jobs or payroll positions that could involve significant sums of money, credit checks are now fast, cheap and used for all manner of work. Employers, often winnowing a big pool of job applicants in days of nearly 10 percent unemployment, view the credit check as a valuable tool for assessing someone’s judgment.

“How do you get out from under it?” asked Matthew W. Finkin, a law professor at the University of Illinois, who fears that the unemployed and debt-ridden could form a luckless class. “You can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job, and you can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit.”

Even worse, employers are using credit reports to fill positions that have absolutely nothing to do with money.

“There’s no relationship between being a personal trainer making $US12 an hour” and having a good credit history, said Janet L. Newcomb, a career counselor in Huntington Beach, Calif. “People are being turned down for jobs on the basis of things that really have nothing to do with qualifications.”

So yeah, it sucks to be unemployed, but at least there’s free wi-fi in coffee shops! Oh, right.

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