Employers use surveillance data to lowball salaries

Surveillance wages represent a dangerous escalation of corporate data harvesting, weaponizing personal financial desperation to suppress labor costs. Algorithms scrape sensitive signals like payday loan history and credit card balances to predict a candidate's "reserve wage," penalizing those in financial distress. While legislative efforts like Colorado's "Prohibit Surveillance Data to Set Prices and Wages Act" signal a growing regulatory focus, transparency remains nonexistent. Experts recommend proactive measures like freezing employment data with services such as The Work Number to mitigate automated data scraping.