Why Pay Transparency Laws are Helpful, but Still Fall Short

Here at Clear-Salary.com, we are all for measures that help increase pay transparency. In recent years, we’ve seen certain locations such as California and New York specifically pass legislation mandating that employers with a certain number of employees within those locations include the salary bands or pay ranges on job postings. We applaud these measures as they are certainly helpful (though clever HR departments and lawyers found ways to shirk those requirements initially by posting absurdly large and impractical ranges—more on that in another article), but even if posted in good faith, they only address one small portion of the problem as they relate to open roles for new hires. They do little to nothing to address the employee who has been in a role for many years and is making tens of thousands of dollars less than the lesser-experienced co-worker down the hall and has no clue about it! Sadly, we are speaking from experience here and have heard that from others as well. More on that, perhaps, another day!

Moreover, the new pay transparency laws have only been implemented in a handful of locations. There are many regional and local employers throughout the country that will never feel the impact of these laws.

That’s why it’s up to us. Pay transparency is in our hands. Let’s build this community and empower one another together!