Employers Use Personal Data to Estimate Workers’ Salary Floors
Companies are turning to personal and behavioral data to estimate the lowest salary a candidate would accept, raising concerns about privacy and unequal pay.
Employers are increasingly using a practice described as “surveillance wages” to estimate an individual worker’s reservation price — the minimum pay level at which they are unlikely to reject an offer. The data reportedly considered can include previous salary, job-search behavior, financial vulnerability, credit-card debt, and public social-media activity.
Rather than relying only on market rates, the aim is to tailor offers to a candidate’s personal circumstances. Labor experts warn this could shift pay decisions away from skills, experience, or the value of the role and instead reward companies for identifying workers with fewer financial options.
The trend also points to a widening information imbalance: employers may know far more about a candidate’s financial situation than the candidate knows about the company’s actual salary budget. Critics say the practice raises serious privacy, discrimination, and unequal-pay concerns.
Source: First Squawk