Over the past year, there’s been a lot of misinformation being spread online in regards to The Work Number. Yes, a report that provides your past income, employment dates, and even business income does exist. No, it is not often accurate. But recruiters and verification services still use it, to try and poke holes in applicant’s resumes or stories. 

While researching this, we created a Compendium of everything TWN related, including:

• Where does the data come from?

• Step by step instructions on how to freeze your TWN

• Reasons to give when a recruiter asks about your frozen TWN

Please, if you don't know what the TWN is, please learn about it and freeze it! Even if you aren't lying or doing overemployment. For example, they've even convinced QuickBooks to sell them data on how much money your small business makes.

Just wanted to give a PSA to job hunters out there. I genuinely had no idea this existed until I saw a TikTok a few months ago saying you could freeze this info. Basically It’s an employment and income database. SOME employers report your job history and pay info to it. Prospective employers can access this to verify employment history and income.

I checked mine and had jobs from so long ago that aren’t listed on my resume. and some of the dates / info were completely incorrect. You can freeze it on the website theworknumber.com

I’m not sure how many companies verify through this database but it’s worth checking out to prevent any discrepancies in what’s listed on resume vs what’s listed on your work number report

It had every job (outside of smaller companies such as startups or SaaS), my title at the job, what insurance I had at the job, what my pay rate was, my start and stop dates, my pay dates, the amount on each paycheck, how many hours I worked each pay period, etc. If I was a temporary employee, it had what the business paid as my salary and not what I took home. Ex: I was making 13/hr. but the company was paying 19.50/hr.

I was able to see my payrate working at 7/11 in 2004 for 7.25/hr. and how many hours I worked each pay period.

There was also a letter posted by at least one previous employer about my immigration status, although I'm not an immigrant and I assume they do it regardless since it is a company based outside the U.S.

If you are out here trying to get a new job with better pay and an employer pulls this, you're getting low balled or eliminated from the candidate pool based on your previous employment tenure/title/payrate. I highly advise that everyone pull their data and have it frozen. Lastly, when you pull your report, you'll be able to see who all pulled it within the last 24 months.