RELIABLE BACKGROUND SCREENING INDUSTRY NEWS AND ARTICLES
Industry news, helpful tips, and valuable insight from the Reliable Background Screening Team.
Ban the Box and Fair Chance Hiring Statistics 2026: State Laws, Coverage, and Compliance Data
Ban the box has moved from a handful of cities to a nationwide compliance reality: roughly 35 to 37 states plus Washington, D.C. and more than 150 local governments now have fair chance hiring laws. With more than 70 million Americans holding a criminal record, these laws reshape when and how employers can consider criminal history, and getting the timing wrong can trigger penalties into six figures. Key Takeaways Roughly 35 to 37 states plus D.C. and more than 150 cities and counties have adopted ban the box or fair chance policies (NELP). Only about 12 to 15 states extend these laws [...]
Employee Theft and Workplace Fraud Statistics 2026: What Occupational Fraud Costs Employers
The typical organization loses about 5 percent of its revenue to occupational fraud every year, with a median loss of roughly $145,000 per case and an average approaching $1.7 million. The uncomfortable truth for employers: most of the people committing that fraud are trusted, long-tenured employees who passed their background check, which is exactly why screening has to be paired with monitoring and controls. Key Takeaways Organizations lose an estimated 5 percent of annual revenue to occupational fraud, a figure the ACFE calls conservative. The median fraud loss is about $145,000 per case; the average is roughly $1.7 million, with total identified [...]
Background Check Industry Statistics 2026
Background screening is now nearly universal: roughly 93 to 96 percent of U.S. employers run some form of check before hiring, inside a U.S. services market worth about $3.2 billion in 2026. Yet as adoption plateaus, the risk it guards against is climbing, with candidate discrepancies, synthetic identities, and AI-assisted resume fraud all trending sharply upward. Key Takeaways The U.S. background check services industry is valued at about $3.2 billion in 2026 across roughly 1,597 businesses, per IBISWorld, a mature market where scale matters less than compliance expertise and accuracy. Screening is nearly universal: 93 to 96 percent of U.S. employers conduct [...]
Mid-Year Supplier Review: Is Your Background Screening Provider Truly Reducing Your Risk?
For many organizations, the middle of the year is the perfect time to evaluate suppliers. Companies routinely review insurance carriers, payroll providers, HR technology, accounting firms, and other critical business partners to ensure they continue to deliver value. One supplier that is often overlooked, however, is their background screening provider. Many organizations assume that all background screening companies provide the same information, use the same processes, and deliver similar levels of service. In reality, there are many times significant differences in quality, compliance, customer support, search methodology, and overall risk mitigation. A background check should never be viewed as a commodity as [...]
