The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, 42 U.S.C. 653a, established in 1997 a
New Hire Registry in which all employers in the United States, private or public, State and Federal, must report all newly hired employees within 20 days or less
depending on how they report. The report includes name, address, and Social Security number of each new employee. States are required to match reports of newly hired employees against social security numbers of persons having outstanding child support orders, and to issue an order to the
employer to withhold and forward unpaid child support payments.
Many
U.S. states have passed laws that allows the
Department of Public Safety in the state to use its information to find the non-compliant parent and call them to account for their actions. There are now many collections-oriented sites on the Internet that mention or highlight deadbeat parents, some even showing mug shots and marking the photos as "found" in the style of the
FBI's "most wanted" list.