Yes. US residents' ability to obtain credit (cards, cars, houses) is based on three shadowy for-profit organizations who each keep a secret score on each resident.

One's employment history is not a factor in the score at all (contrast this with Europe).

Furthermore, privacy in the USA is so bad, the leaking of one's personal details which criminals can use to fraudulently obtain credit and ruin said score and possibly also one's finances is a major concern. Hence, "credit monitoring" exists in order to catch this kind of criminal activity in the act, and I don't know, become completely exasperated with the amount of ass pain that dealing with this then causes.

Credit monitoring has nothing to do with Credit Cards.

Most banks in America indeed do offer (for free) the option to be notified for each transactions if you want.