Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept
Employers are increasingly tapping payroll services, credit bureaus, and HR platforms to buy detailed income histories and personal data, then use that information to calibrate the lowest salary candidates are likely to accept. Commenters highlight the resulting power imbalance and privacy risks, noting opaque data-sharing by firms like Equifax, onerous opt‑out processes, and the potential for algorithmic discrimination and wage suppression. Some point to salary transparency laws, collective action, and data “poisoning” as partial countermeasures, while others argue that worker access to employer pay ranges still lags far behind what employers know about workers.
Data Brokers, Equifax, and “The Work Number”
- Several comments explain that many employers and payroll providers send salary data to Equifax’s “The Work Number,” which then sells it for income/ employment verification, including to employers, landlords, lenders, and possibly social services.
- A “freeze” is opt‑out only; data is not deleted. Opting out requires sending extensive identity and address documents, which many see as invasive and risky, especially given Equifax’s past breaches.
- People note the asymmetry: collection is frictionless, while opting out is high‑friction, suggesting the process is optimized for data exploitation, not privacy.
- Some defend strict ID checks as necessary to prevent malicious third‑party opt‑outs; others call this hypocritical since such rigor was not applied to collection.
Information Asymmetry and Wage Negotiation
- One camp argues this is just how markets work: both sides try to discover the overlap between what employers will pay and what employees will accept; public salary data and recruiters also help workers.
- Others push back hard: precise knowledge of a candidate’s past pay and financial stress greatly increases employers’ bargaining power and diminishes workers’ ability to negotiate, leading to systemic underpayment.
- There’s debate over whether “the market price” is independent of such data; critics argue that anchoring on prior salary directly lowers future offers.
- Some discuss that employees also gather data (Glassdoor, peers, AI tools), but most agree employers still hold far more and richer data.
Discrimination and Algorithmic Tools
- Commenters warn that combining detailed financial/employment data with AI enables de‑facto discrimination (age, health, pregnancy, race, religion) via proxies while maintaining plausible deniability.
- There is skepticism toward corporate claims that they “don’t use algorithmic wage‑setting tools”; people note that once such metrics appear in HR systems, they’re likely to influence decisions informally.
Legal, Ethical, and Policy Angles
- Many view employer‑driven data sharing without explicit consent as a major privacy violation and call for strong wage‑transparency laws, strict limits on such data, and heavy penalties.
- Europeans note GDPR‑style regimes would forbid much of this or at least constrain it; US commenters contrast the weaker protections and greater role of private credit bureaus.
Broader Concerns and Counter‑Moves
- Fears extend to landlords and retailers using income data to ratchet up prices and rents, converging on a world where one’s entire financial life is continuously optimized against them.
- Proposed responses include poisoning data, avoiding certain HR/payroll platforms, pushing for transparency laws, and, for some, shifting to self‑employment—though others highlight risk and survivorship bias.