i applied to be town dog catcher a couple years ago. part time, $10/hour, 6 page application that wanted a list of all my bank & credit card accounts with logins & passwords. hell no.
no one needs a job that badly, plus the applications are kept on file at the police station (a dog officer is a police officer), and our police station isn't exactly that secure since it is unmanned from 5pm to 8am... they were asking for things that were absolutely none of an employer's business.
while i can vaguely understand a police type job needing to know if an employee might have debt issues that could lead to corruptibility, a simple credit check should handle that. you don't need to know all my credit card purchases & payments (i don't often use cash because i'm allergic to it), nor my bank account deposits & withdrawals.
i'm actually not ok with potential employers doing credit checks in most instances, because every credit check is a ding on your credit score (ok this is going to lead to how stupid the whole credit score system is & that it's actually a tool of repression of women & POC, so i'll stop now)
@redenigma 100% agree with you. Credit scores are manufactured numbers with changing criteria. Credit checks harm people who may have had a bad run but are trying like hell to turn their lives around. And yes, I also agree with your thought process about it being used as a tool of repression.