Is it illegal to ask for a DOB on an employment application in ANY state?

Federal law does not prohibit asking for your DOB on an employment application. Your date of birth is needed if the company is going to have a background investigation conducted on you. Many companies are doing this in our post 9/11 world. Smart companies will not ask for this information until after they offer you a job (to eliminate the potential for an age discrimination suit) but there is no requirement for them to do so.

Of course, information on your age is taken as a step in the hiring process--when citizenship is checked, and when background checks, if any, are run.

Of course, employers DO ask illegal questions during the application and hiring process. They also engage in activities that may lead to lawsuits on the basis of invasion of privacy--such as running extensive background checks on employees, when the information they are compiling has nothing to do with the job.

When a company does these things, it is not necessarily legal. They are doing it because, thus far, they have gotten away with it.

But the initial application should not ask for an applicant's age, except for the legal question, "are you 18 years of age or older"?

An employer who does not discriminate in hiring has no business asking for further information, in the initial stages of the hiring process, nor does the employer have any business requiring the dates of your high school application.
Many applications nowadays ask only if you graduated--from high school, college, and beyond, and ask you to list what type of degree you have.

The law, as posted below, does not set these requirements out specifically. But since the law states that employers may not discriminate against employees who are over 40, employers who are trying to remain within the law have changed their applications.

Yes, it is

Not to my knowledge.

No.

It's basic identification and required by law.

As for asking your year of graduation, etc, that'd only be relevant if you could prove that the information was being used to facilitate age discrimination.

possibly, they need to know if you're over a certain age in regards to child labor laws

No, in fact it is required in order to properly verify your citizenship status.

As an employeer, NO, as long as you do not descrimanate.

You are required to put your DOB down in order to confirm that you can apply for that job without parental concent.

Generally speaking, yes. However, for certain jobs one must be of a certain age--due to insurance purposes (old enough to sell alcohol--old enough to drive a cab or bus, etc.). Even so, I don't think they can ask for one's date of birth on the application--but once hired, one must provide proof of age in order to perform certain jobs legally.

To see a llist of some of the questions employers can and cannot ask check the link below.