How to Find Your Work History for Free

No free record lists every job you have had with employer names and dates. Start with your old resumes, LinkedIn profile and email. Then fill the gaps with The Work Number’s free Employment Data Report and your IRS Wage and Income transcript, which covers the last 10 years. Your free Social Security Statement shows yearly earnings only; Social Security charges $61 to name your employers.

If you cannot remember every job, that is normal. People born from 1957 to 1964 held an average of 12.9 jobs between ages 18 and 58, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each record below covers a different piece, so expect to use three or four of them.

What each record shows

Record	What it shows	Cost
The Work Number report	Employer names and employment dates, for employers that send it data	Free
IRS Wage and Income transcript	The first four characters of each employer’s name, by tax year, for the current year and the nine before it	Free
Social Security Statement	Your earnings for each year, with no employer names	Free
Social Security itemized statement (Form SSA-7050)	Employer names and addresses and periods of employment, for the years you ask for	$61, or $96 certified; allow 120 days
Credit report	Sometimes, employers you listed on credit applications	Free every week

Use them in the order that costs the least. Your own files come first: they are free and hold the titles and duties a resume needs. Pay Social Security only for older employers you cannot name any other way. For exact start and end dates, see how to find the exact dates you worked.

Start with what you already have

You can search your own files today, and they often remember more than you do. Look in:

• Old resumes and cover letters, including copies in your email and cloud folders.
• Your LinkedIn profile. You can save it as a PDF from your profile (More, then Save to PDF).
• Your email. Search for “offer letter”, “onboarding”, “payroll” and “resignation”, and for the names of companies you remember.
• W-2s, pay stubs and past tax returns.
• Performance reviews and old job descriptions, which also remind you what you achieved in each role.

Write down every employer, title and rough date range you find. The official records below fill the gaps and check what you remember.

Get your free Employment Data Report from The Work Number

The Work Number is an Equifax database. Employers, payroll providers and third-party administrators send it your employment and pay data, so it can answer employment verifications. Its Employment Data Report shows you what it holds, for free.

1. Register at employees.theworknumber.com, or call 1-800-367-2884. You can also send a request form by mail or by email to EDR@equifax.com.
2. Read each employer’s entry for your current and past employment, your employment dates and your income.
3. Check the list of who asked to see your data in the past 24 months. It shows who has already looked you up, such as an employer running a background check.
4. If something is wrong, dispute it online, by phone or by mail. A dispute can take up to 30 days.

The report only covers employers that send data to The Work Number, so a job can be absent from the report and still belong in your work history. The report is for your own use, not a verification you can hand to an employer.

Use your IRS Wage and Income transcript for the last 10 years

This transcript lists the W-2s, 1099s and other information returns filed for you in the current tax year and the nine before it. The IRS does not charge for it.

1. Sign in to your IRS Individual Online Account. You need an ID.me account, a government-issued photo ID, and to be 18 or older.
2. Request the Wage and Income transcript for each year you need.
3. Write down each employer and the years its forms appear.

Two limits matter for a work history. First, the transcript is masked: it shows only the first four characters of each business name and the last four digits of its tax ID. Read it as a list of who paid you in which year, and match the short names to your memory or your other records. Second, it shows only forms filed with the IRS, so it may not include every form you received.

To get it by mail, use Form 4506-T. The IRS’s Get Transcript by Mail service and its phone line will not help here. They send only tax return and tax account transcripts.

What your Social Security record shows

Your Social Security Statement is free with a my Social Security account at ssa.gov. It shows your earnings for each year, and Social Security says it “does not show any employer information.” It is useful for seeing which years you worked and spotting a year you forgot.

To get your employers’ names from Social Security, request an itemized statement with Form SSA-7050. It lists the names and addresses of your employers and your periods of employment for the years you ask for. Social Security charges:

• $61 for an itemized statement
• $96 for a certified itemized statement
• $35 for certified yearly totals, which do not include employer names

You mail the form with payment, the fee is not refundable, and Social Security asks you to allow 120 days. If you believe your earnings record is wrong, name the years and explain why on the form. Social Security may then send the detail for those years without charging. Check the current fees on Social Security’s SSA-7050 page before you send it.

Three kinds of work can be missing from the Statement:

• Last year’s job. Social Security may not have recorded your most recent earnings yet. It suggests checking your Statement in August to make sure last year is right.
• Self-employment. It reaches Social Security only through your federal tax return, on Schedule SE when your net earnings are $400 or more in a year. Freelance income you never reported there will not appear.
• Many state and local government jobs. About a quarter of those workers are not covered by Social Security in that job, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most of the uncovered local government workers are police officers, firefighters and teachers.

How to find the exact dates you worked

No free government record gives exact start and end dates: the IRS transcript and the Social Security Statement both work in years. For the dates, use:

• The Work Number report, which lists employment dates as your employer sent them.
• Your former employer. Ask HR or payroll for an employment verification letter with your start date, end date and title. Ask soon: federal rules require employers to keep personnel records for one year and payroll records for three years, so older files may be gone.
• Your own paperwork: the offer letter or first-day email for your start date, your resignation email, and your first and last pay stubs.
• Former federal employees: your personnel folder moves to your next agency, or to the National Archives when you leave federal service.

On a resume, month and year is enough for most jobs. See how to format dates on a resume. Before a background check, make your dates match what your former employer holds, because background checks typically confirm past employers, positions and employment dates. Read more about what background checks show.

Keep it in one place so you only do this once

Once you have rebuilt your history, store all of it, not just the jobs on your current resume. This full private record is often called a master resume. Teal’s help center puts it this way: “Your Teal resume is your complete work history in one place. Not the polished one-pager you send to employers, but the comprehensive source document you pull from.”

In Teal’s AI Resume Builder, you can import your history from a resume file (.docx or .pdf), your LinkedIn profile URL, or pasted text. Each position holds its title, description, location, type, and start and end dates. Several resumes can share the same work history, and you check the jobs and details each one should use. You can create and download unlimited resumes for free, with no credit card required. Teal+ unlocks additional templates, settings and advanced features.

The master record is not what you send. As Teal’s CEO Dave Fano puts it, a resume is “a sales document, not a history lesson.” Keep the history in one place, and each resume only has to pick from it. When you are ready to pick, see how many jobs to list on a resume.

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Sources: Social Security’s Form SSA-7050 page and its leaflets on correcting your earnings record and on self-employment; the IRS pages on transcript types, transcript masking and ID.me sign-in; The Work Number’s Employment Data Report and dispute pages; the CFPB’s list of consumer reporting companies; AnnualCreditReport.com and Experian; the EEOC’s recordkeeping rules; the Department of Labor’s employment records page; the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of jobs held; and the Congressional Research Service report on state and local government workers outside Social Security. Reviewed October 16, 2026.