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The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Kristle Cortés

    (The University of New South Wales)

  • Andy Glover

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City)

  • Murat Tasci

    (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristle Cortés & Andy Glover & Murat Tasci, 2020. "The Unintended Consequences of Employer Credit Check Bans for Labor Markets," Working Papers 2020-037, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
  • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2020-037
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    vacancies; credit score; credit check;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs

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