Just a fun fact, this stopped being true as of June 25, 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Structu...

But since there probably aren't many two-year-olds applying for jobs nowadays the comment is still relevant.

Not just a fun fact, but also an informative fact.

Thank you for the update and chuckle!

Only for younger people - SSNs have only been assigned at birth since the 1980s. My mother was born in West Virginia but her SSN has a Minnesota prefix, because that's where she lived when she got her first job.

Someone who wasn't born a US citizen would only get assigned an SSN with their green card or work visa, and I'd imagine the prefix would indicate their first place of residence in the US.

So the most you can get from a pre-2011 SSN is that someone lived in some particular state in some particular year, and that information is likely inferable from the resume anyway.

I was born in the early 70's and mine was assigned at birth. In fact, when I was a teenager I ran into someone else born at the same hospital on the same day (at the time we met we were thousands of miles away living in a different city on the other side of the state, so not a high probability event). The first 6 digits of our SSNs were the same.

Children are not automatically assigned a SSN at birth.

Quoting from the Social Security office: "Must my child have a Social Security number? No. Getting a Social Security number for your newborn is voluntary. But, it is a good idea to get a number when your child is born. You can apply for a Social Security number for your baby when you apply for your baby’s birth certificate."

A couple of decades back, the law was changed to require the SSN for any claimed dependents. Most people, of course, want that ~ $4,000 deduction, so hospitals often distribute the birth registration form.

For what it's worth, I was also born in the 1970s, but didn't get my SSN until jr. high, as I recall.