What’s the reason we have jobs? To get paid. 

You’d think that we should know what we’re going to get paid before we spend time and energy applying for a job, but that isn’t the case for much of the United States. With pay transparency laws being different across the country, not everyone is getting the same access to salary information. 

For years it’s been normalized for employers to hide pay on job listings, ask for salary history, promote pay secrecy, & avoid reporting on pay data. This gives the employer the upper hand in salary negotiations and raise discussions, which can cause pay gaps & wage discrimination for workers. 

Despite the implementation of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a significant gender wage gap persists, with women still earning less than men for equivalent work. This wage disparity exists across both private and public sectors, and mostly affects women of color.

Pay transparency laws seek to change that, giving more power back to workers' as they fight for fair pay, negotiate salaries, and ask for a raises.

Pay transparency laws can differ from state-to-state, city-to-city, and even sector-to-sector. Depending on your location, your job search may be impacted in all the best ways.

Key points:

• Pay transparency laws help create policies that close marginalizing pay gaps, combat discrimination, and help workers get paid what they deserve.
• In locations where pay transparency laws are not in effect yet, employers are already starting to disclose pay ranges on listings and becoming part of the movement.
• With several states having 1 or more laws that require pay transparency in some way, there are now federal bills in the works.

What are Pay Transparency Laws?

Pay transparency laws govern how employers disclose information about employee compensation, whether that’s internally or externally. They help ensure that all employees are compensated fairly and equitably for the work they do, regardless of gender, race, or other demographic factors, while also helping employees to be able to advocate for themselves with more ease when they negotiate salary in a job offer. 

Disclosing pay compensation has been a practice for quite some time in state and federal job listings. Requirements for private companies are a little different depending on your location as these laws can vary by jurisdiction.

It's important for both employers and employees to be aware of the pay transparency laws that apply to their jurisdiction to ensure compliance and protect their rights.

Types of Pay Transparency Laws

There are 4 different types of pay transparency legislation that currently exist in the U.S. This includes laws that require disclosure of pay ranges, salary history bans, policies that prohibit pay secrecy, and requirements around pay data reporting.

Required Disclosure of Pay Range

Pay transparency laws that require pay range disclosure exist in a variety of ways and change from location to location. Some laws require salary ranges to be posted in all job listings while other laws require disclosure upon candidate request or after the first interview.  

“Most of the laws say that employers must post a range that they in ‘good faith’ believe they will pay for the role,” says Lulu Seikaly, Senior Corporate Employment Attorney at PayScale. The pay range posted can be a wide range or smaller range depending on the company.

Salary History Bans

Salary history bans are laws that prohibit employers from asking candidates about their salary history, including the question on applications, and from retaliating against job applicants for not sharing salary history information.

What someone makes at a past job shouldn’t have anything to do with what they make at a new job and can often bar them from negotiating for more. Salary history bans make it possible for candidates and employees to fairly negotiate their salary, as it puts them on a more equal level playing field as the employer during those discussions.

Policies Against Pay Secrecy

Thanks to the National Labor Relations Act, workers are legally protected from employer retaliation for talking about their pay. In order for workers to be fully protected under the act, it’s best to share salary information off company time and property.

While most employees in the private sector are covered by the NLRA, the act doesn’t cover any federal, state, or local government employees.

Other workers that aren’t covered by the NLRA includes: 

• agricultural laborers
• domestic service workers of any person or family in a home
• Workers employed by a parent or spouse
• independent contractors
• supervisors
• railroads and airlines workers

For more information on who is and isn’t covered by the NLRA, visit their jurisdictional standards page.

Required Pay Data Reporting

Reporting on pay data helps to identify and eliminate any inequities in compensation.

There are a handful of states including Illinois & Minnesota that are currently required to report pay and demographic data. This data is usually required to be reported on an annual basis and to their Civil Rights Department, Department of Labor, or other state agency.

For our European friends, the EU recently introduced pay transparency legislation that includes similar pay data reporting requirements. Under the directive, EU companies are required to share information about how much employers pay women and men for the same work. If it’s found from the reporting that the gender pay gap exceeds 5%, legal action will be taken in the form of penalties and fines for employers who break the rules.

Pay Transparency Laws By State & Jurisdiction

Click through the interactive chart below for pay transparency laws across the U.S. including what’s required in your state. To see the full explanation & documentation of each law per state, refer to the full table down below.

Pay Transparency Laws By State Table

What About Remote Employees?

Where the laws get confusing is when candidates or employees are remote and located elsewhere that isn’t clarified in the law.

“When Colorado’s law first came out, many companies were posting remote job postings, but the postings were explicitly excluding Colorado applicants. A lawsuit was filed, and Colorado came in and said that if employers do this, they are operating in bad faith and skirting around the law. Ultimately, if the job can be performed in 49 out of 50 states, it can be performed in all 50 states, and employers must comply by posting ranges,” Seikaly explained. 

Pay Transparency Outside The U.S.

Pay transparency laws don’t only exist in the U.S.. In Canada, 4 provinces have passed pay transparency legislation. As of 2024, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia have pay transparency laws in place.

Employers are required to provide wage and salary information for any public job listing they post in all 4 provinces. They have all also added salary history bans, and all except for Prince Edward Island require pay transparency reporting. 

Ontario is the most recent province to do the same in their proposed Bill 149, which will require pay information to be included in public job postings.

The Rise & Evolution of The Pay Transparency Landscape

The importance of salary transparency is becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day (and interview we film). Pay transparency laws weren't around 10 years ago. Now there are over 30 states that have some form of pay transparency law, with more on the way, and a movement that continues to grow.

Due to the rise of pay transparency, Indeed reported that the amount of jobs disclosing salary information more than doubled from 18.4% to 43.7% between February 2020 and February 2023.

Where to Go From Here

A new Federal bill HR 1599 was proposed to include pay ranges in all job postings, provide pay ranges to applicants, and provide pay ranges to existing employees for their positions. If the bill is passed, pay ranges across the U.S. would be required on all job listings from any “employer providing an employment opportunity” – which is a pretty big deal.

The federal protections being proposed don’t stop there. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Fairness Act on March 27, 2023. If the bill ends up getting signed into law, employers nationwide would be prohibited from asking job applicants about their salary history. It would also require them to prove that pay disparities between genders are job-related.

It looks like there’s no stopping pay transparency across the country. This is only the beginning. 

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