Salary history - why so critically important?

Question

It amazes me how vital employers feel your previous salary history is so important in the "consideration" stage. Weather it be recruiters or employers, it's a tad rediculous for employers to keep salary ranges top secret while pretty much demanding to have you disclose your salary history. Two schools of thought........1. The employer has the habit of "low balling" salary offers and does'nt want you to know & 2. If your history is outside the range ( high ) of what they're willing to offer, they'' just place your resume in the 'dead file' having never talked to you.

My personal take on the matter is that employers who disclose little to nothing ( sometimes not even their identity ) while requireing for the candidate to disclose everything including the value of your last paycheck is an employer I'll personally pass on. Afterall, they get what they pay for. Ever wonder why the position became available in the first place?

Answer 1

It would have been better if there were a real question in here to answer.  

Answer 2

Employers ask for two reasons:

1) To determine if they can actually pay you a competitive wage at the job in question and not have you insulted or not stay due to higher previous pay. This was a problem I had, my previous job that I got laid off from was quite high paying and had high bonus and I was essentially shut out of lower paying jobs, forcing me to look for higher level, higher paying jobs (made me move....)

2) Steadily increasing pay shows a growing and valuable employee, stagnent pay indicates performance issues, declining pay shows a serious problem and to stay away from that person

Its a way of getting at least some info on you since most all employers today won't give any info about their former employee but that they worked there from such time to such time..no pay, no details