2. A period of unemployment is also likely to damage one’s credit rating. In a fiendish catch-22, 35 percent of U.S. companies now run a credit check as a condition for employment, up from 19 percent in 1996—making it far more difficult to bounce back after hard times. See Marie Szaniszlo, “Employers Turning to a New Kind of Ref Check,” Boston Herald, December 12, 2004.