Pay Transparency Laws by State 2026: Where Salary Ranges Are Required

The Numbers Behind the Pay Transparency Movement

Start with the data from Indeed Hiring Lab and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: 60% of US job postings as of early 2025 included at least some salary information — up from just 18% in 2020. The New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics blog found that when a pay transparency law took effect in a jurisdiction, the share of postings with salary information increased by an average of 20 percentage points immediately in that month. The causal relationship between legislation and disclosure is unambiguous.

Before 2021, pay transparency legislation existed only in scattered city ordinances and limited salary history ban laws. Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which took effect January 1, 2021, was the first comprehensive state law requiring salary ranges in job postings. New York City followed in November 2022, California and Washington in January 2023, and the pipeline has accelerated — five states added laws in 2025 alone.

The compliance picture is imperfect, however. The New York Fed found that approximately 24% of job postings from employers legally required to disclose salary ranges still do not comply as of early 2025. Both New York and Colorado have conducted active audit campaigns and issued fines — enforcement is real, not theoretical.

This guide is for both workers and HR professionals. Workers: use it to know your rights when you see a job posting without a salary range from a company that is legally required to list one. HR professionals: use it to audit your job posting practices before enforcement finds you. See our Pay Equity Guide for the broader gender and racial wage gap context these laws are designed to address.

Pay Transparency Laws: Complete State-by-State Table (2026)

The table below covers every state with active job posting salary disclosure requirements as of May 2026. States with only salary history bans (prohibiting employers from asking about past pay) are listed separately after this table.

Sources: Jackson Lewis 2026 Pay Transparency Analysis; Paycor State Pay Transparency Tracker; GovDocs Pay Transparency Laws Database; SixFifty CA and NY Law Summaries. Effective dates as of May 2026.

Key State Laws: What the Requirements Actually Mean

Colorado: The Gold Standard — and the Most Demanding

Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act is the most demanding pay transparency law in the country. It applies to all employers with even one employee — the lowest coverage threshold nationally. It requires not just a salary range but a complete listing of all compensation and benefits including health insurance, retirement plans, PTO, and bonuses in every job posting. Vague language like “$60,000 and up” or “competitive salary” is explicitly non-compliant.

Colorado also has a unique requirement found in no other state: employers must notify all existing employees of internal promotion opportunities before filling them — preventing the practice of quietly hiring externally while existing employees remain unaware. Violations carry fines up to $10,000 per posting. The Colorado Department of Labor has conducted active audits since 2022 and has issued both warnings and fines.

California: Broadly Applicable, Now Formally Defined

California's pay transparency law (SB 1162) took effect January 1, 2023, and was amended effective January 1, 2026. The amendment formally defined “pay scale” as “a good faith estimate of the salary or hourly range that the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire.” This definition closes loopholes employers used to post artificially wide ranges or ranges inconsistent with actual hiring intent. The law covers employers with 15+ employees and applies to roles where any part of the work occurs in California — including most remote roles where the worker could be in California.

California also requires employers with 100+ employees to submit annual pay data reports to the Civil Rights Department, disaggregated by race, sex, and job category — one of the most granular pay data reporting requirements in the country. Violations of the pay scale posting requirement carry fines of $100–$10,000 per violation.

New York: Active Enforcement, Real Penalties

New York has two layers: New York City's Local Law 32 (effective November 2022) and New York State's expanded law (effective September 2023). Both require a genuine min/max salary range — not open-ended language. The NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection has conducted investigations revealing thousands of non-compliant job postings and issued substantial fines. The maximum penalty of $250,000 per unremedied violation in NYC is the highest in the country and is not theoretical — it has been applied.

Washington's law, effective January 2023, is notable for its explicit rejection of open-ended ranges — and for its July 2025 amendment allowing employers to correct violations before legal liability attaches upon receiving a Notice to Cure, giving compliance teams a second chance before penalties trigger.

What's Coming: New Laws in 2026 and Beyond

The legislative pipeline is still active. Delaware enacted a pay transparency law (effective September 26, 2027) for employers with 25+ employees, requiring salary/wage range and benefits disclosure in all job postings. Virginia and Maine both have salary history bans taking effect July 2026. Eight additional states are actively considering legislation as of 2026, including early drafts in Texas, Florida, and Georgia — which would significantly expand coverage into major economies currently outside the framework.

The trend in existing laws is also notable: thresholds are shrinking. Hawaii's 50-employee threshold is now an outlier among new laws — Minnesota (30+), New Jersey (10+), Maine (10+), Vermont (5+) all set lower bars. Colorado's 1-employee threshold remains the floor. As laws mature, amendments consistently move toward broader coverage.

Jersey City, NJ has its own local ordinance stricter than the state law: it applies to employers with 5+ employees (versus the state's 10+) and covers both direct hires and contractors. This local-versus-state layering requires employers with operations in Jersey City to meet the more stringent local standard, even though NJ state law is also in effect.

Salary History Bans: The Related Layer You Need to Know

Distinct from salary range disclosure requirements, salary history bans prohibit employers from asking job applicants about their previous pay. The rationale: asking about prior salary perpetuates historical pay disparities — a woman who was underpaid in a previous job will continue to be underpaid if employers anchor offers to her prior salary. Seventeen states plus DC now have statewide salary history bans.

Several cities have additional local salary history bans beyond their state laws: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo (Ohio); Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania); Louisville (Kentucky); New Orleans (Louisiana, public employers only); and Chicago (Illinois). These local bans predate many state laws and remain in effect alongside them.

For job seekers in these states and cities: employers cannot ask what you currently earn or what you earned in your last job. If asked, you can decline to answer and cite your state's law. This is particularly powerful for workers negotiating after a period of underpayment — it forces compensation to be set against market rates rather than anchored to a low prior salary. See our Salary Negotiation Email Templates for scripts that leverage market data rather than prior salary as the anchor.

Penalties for Non-Compliance: What Violations Actually Cost

The penalty structure varies dramatically by state — and several states have moved from issuing warnings to actively collecting fines. Here is the current penalty landscape based on published enforcement data from Compport and SixFifty.

Sources: Compport USA Pay Transparency Laws Database; SixFifty CA and NY Law Summaries; enforcement data from state labor department records.

Do These Laws Actually Close the Pay Gap? The Research Says: Complicated

Pay transparency laws were designed in significant part to address gender and racial wage gaps. The current evidence suggests they work — but not primarily by raising women's wages. NBER research (Baker et al.) found that transparency laws narrow the gender wage gap primarily by slowing wage growth among top earners who skew male, rather than accelerating wage growth for women. This “wage compression from the top” effect is real and documented, but it is a different mechanism than advocates typically emphasize.

The overall pay gap remains stubborn. The Census Bureau's 2024 data found women earned 80.9 cents per dollar earned by men — the lowest earnings ratio since 2016. Latinas earned 58 cents per dollar paid to White men, a 42% gap per the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Payscale's 2025 Gender Pay Gap analysis found the gap was essentially flat year-over-year, consistent with the IWPR finding that the trajectory toward pay equity is not improving despite expanded transparency laws.

A November 2024 Harvard Law Review analysis argued that effective pay transparency requires not just posting salary ranges but also disclosing the full value of benefits — because women disproportionately lose compensation value through opaque benefits structures (flexible work, caregiving leave, healthcare coverage quality) that are often not disclosed alongside salary ranges. This “benefit transparency” argument is gaining traction in policy circles but has not yet been adopted in any state law.

Multiple studies confirm that salary transparency alone is insufficient without parallel reforms to promotion criteria, performance evaluation, and job classification. States like Colorado and California have begun addressing these adjacent issues — Colorado's promotion notification requirement is one example — but the legislative agenda has been primarily focused on pay posting rather than structural reform of how compensation decisions are made.

What Pay Transparency Laws Mean for Your Job Search and Negotiation

How to Use Salary Range Information Strategically

When a job posting lists a salary range, treat the top of the range as the default target, not the midpoint. Employers post ranges that reflect their hiring budget — the midpoint or lower is where they hope to hire, not where they must. Research from Glassdoor consistently shows that candidates who negotiate starting salaries achieve increases of 10–20% above initial offers in a significant portion of cases. Use the posted range to anchor the negotiation at the top, not to accept the bottom.

Wide ranges (e.g., $80,000–$140,000 for the same role) are a red flag. Under most laws, “good faith” ranges are required — but enforcement of range reasonableness is inconsistent. A $60,000 spread suggests either genuine position variability (unlikely for a single title) or intentional obfuscation to avoid real disclosure. In states like Washington, excessively wide ranges are explicitly flagged as non-compliant under the “genuine” range standard.

Your Rights When a Covered Employer Does Not Disclose

If you see a job posting from a company that meets your state's employee threshold without a salary range — and your state requires one — you have options. You can file a complaint with your state labor department (Colorado CDLE, California CCRD, New York DOL, DCWP for NYC). You can ask the employer directly for the range in your application or first contact — in most states they are legally required to provide it even if they failed to post it. And you can use the absence as a negotiating signal: companies that hide pay ranges often hide pay inequity within them.

For HR Professionals: The Compliance Checklist

Before posting any job in 2026, HR teams should verify: (1) Does the posting include a genuine, good-faith salary range appropriate to the role and seniority level? (2) If the role is fully remote, which states could applicants be in — and do those states' laws apply? (3) Does the posting disclose benefits if required (Colorado, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Maryland)? (4) Has the job description been reviewed for language that could constitute a salary history inquiry? Review our Pay Equity Guide for the broader compensation audit framework.

The Federal Vacuum: No National Pay Transparency Law Exists

Despite significant advocacy, there is no federal pay transparency law requiring salary disclosure in job postings as of 2026. The Paycheck Fairness Act (S.1115 / H.R.17 in the 119th Congress) was reintroduced but remains in committee, and has no realistic path to passage in the current Congress. The Salary Transparency Act (H.R.1599) faces similar obstacles.

The federal direction is actually moving backward. On January 21, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14173, which rescinded the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision that had previously applied to federal contractors — eliminating a requirement that covered millions of workers at federal contractors and subcontractors who build everything from defense systems to government software.

The practical implication: pay transparency regulation in the US is state-driven and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The patchwork of state laws — with different thresholds, requirements, and penalties — creates significant compliance complexity for multi-state employers. The 65% of US employers impacted by at least one pay transparency requirement (per Beqom's Pay Transparency Index) are navigating this complexity largely without federal guidance.

Frequently Asked Questions