Over the last few years, states that were early adopters of pay transparency laws have served as a testing ground for advocates of the policy change, who argued that disclosing salary information would help mitigate pay inequities on the basis of race and gender.
It’s already clear that these laws—which typically require employers to either post salary ranges in job listings or verbally disclose them to candidates—are empowering workers in certain states with more information. But not all salary transparency laws are made equal.
The National Women’s Law Center just published an analysis of Glassdoor data from March 2022 to December 2023, which looked at how pay transparency laws have altered job listings across industries in states where these laws have either been in effect or took effect during that period. According to the NWLC, the impact has been more noticeable in states that have stricter laws requiring salary ranges in job listings—namely California, Colorado, New York, and Washington—than in states where the law only dictates that employers to share salary ranges during the interview process (such as Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, and Rhode Island).
While pay transparency has grown more popular as a corporate policy regardless of state law, the analysis found that in the most lucrative sectors—among them pharma, biotech, and finance—salary information in Glassdoor job listings was less common on the whole. Still, there was a marked difference in salary disclosure when comparing states that required ranges in job postings against states with less stringent pay transparency laws. In pharma and biotech, for example, over 48% of job listings in states with strong pay transparency laws had salary information; in states with weaker laws, that share dropped below 16%, which was more or less on par with the percentage in states with no laws in place.
There was a similar effect in industries where salary disclosure was more widespread, albeit to a lesser degree: Nonprofits and NGOs included salary information in nearly 80% of job postings across states with strong laws, as compared to about 53% in other states. One outlier was the HR industry, which—perhaps unsurprisingly—has unusually high rates of pay transparency on Glassdoor. For those job listings, the proportion that included salary information remained above 74% regardless of state law.
When comparing job listings in different states, the NWLC analysis also found that while salary transparency increased across the board from early 2022 to late 2023—even in states that have not introduced legislation—the impact of strong pay transparency laws was undeniable. In New York, 94% of job postings had salary ranges, along with over 81% in Colorado and 76% in California. Even in Maine, which had the highest share among states without laws, only about 50% of listings had salary information.
These findings seem to indicate that passing the right type of pay transparency law is key to ensuring that workers actually reap its benefits—perhaps, in part, because it’s easier to monitor compliance when companies are required to publish salary information in a public forum. As Fast Company reported recently, however, it’s not yet clear how different states will approach enforcement of these laws when employers try to circumvent them. While a handful of companies have been fined for violations of the law in Colorado, other employers have complied with salary transparency laws by using overly broad salary ranges—a tactic that has been interpreted as a violation of the law in New York City.
In the meantime, however, plenty of other states are adopting their own salary transparency laws—and often the most effective iteration of this legislation, by requiring salary ranges in job listings. Washington, D.C. has greenlit a law that will take effect later this year (pending Congressional approval), and lawmakers in Virginia have passed a salary transparency bill that is now awaiting a decision from the governor. And several other states have either enacted laws—like Illinois and Hawaii—or are looking to pass bills this year.
