The national consumer reporting agencies all state that they do not provide credit scores for employment purposes. On its website, Experian explains: "Experian's Employment Insight report includes similar information about loans and credit cards that is listed in the credit report. It does not include year of birth, spouse reference, account number or credit score, which are irrelevant to hiring decisions."
Another of the big three CRAs, TransUnion, even testified, "There's no such thing as a credit score in employment."
Wikipedia's move, and Cookiehead
In December, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia personified, tried to eliminate an entry to Wikipedia that warned, "Another Non[SIC] traditional use of credit scores in the United States that has been growing since the economic down turn is pre-employment."
That inaccurate claim was made anonymously by someone at IP address 168.103.203.229, which is associated with the Denver area.
Here is what happened. First was this message from the @creditscoring Twitter social network account: "Christmas came early this year. http://blog.creditscoring.com/?p=2997 So, #nowwhat, @jimmy_wales and #wikipedia?"
The following day, a Wikipedian (rhymes with comedian) with the screenname Cookiehead posted, "In 2009, TransUnion representatives testified before the Connecticut legislature about their practice of marketing credit score reports to employers for use in the hiring process."
TransUnion testified alright, but here is what the CRA's representative actually said to the lawmakers that day: “Now, credit scores aren’t used in employment decisions so let’s get that straight.”
So, why would anybody looking for a job—when credit reports are free—want to buy a credit score? They're not used by employers. Who would want the jobless to spend money on such a thing?
But wait, there's more
Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," also proclaims that "Credit utilization—The ratio of current revolving debt (such as credit card balances) to the total available revolving credit or credit limit," makes up 30% of the FICO score (referring to the Fair Isaac broad-based risk credit bureau score).
As with the credit scores/jobs notion, that is not proven, either. Simple math does not, practically, support the statement, but an endless parade of chumps have lined up to repeat it. Even Wikipedia's graphic is misleading: It refers to the 30% category as "Capacity used" while the article itself calls it "Credit Utilization." Neither are correct. The Wikipedia editors use an entirely different name for the category. The reality is that the credit score company calls it "Amounts owed," and there is even a footnote linking to those words on the official FICO website.
The media'streatment of that aspect of the famous score is pathetic. Mathematical logic be damned, the time-tested self-regulating principle of journalism—citing sources—is all but forgotten.
