Do Employers Adjust to Pay Transparency Necessities in Job Postings?

Richard Audoly and Roshie Xing

Over the previous few months, New Jersey and Vermont have joined a rising variety of U.S. states in requiring employers to incorporate an estimated wage vary of their on-line job listings. Has this push for higher pay transparency been efficient? On this put up, we use granular information on U.S. job postings from Lightcast to evaluate employers’ compliance with these new laws. Specializing in the jurisdictions that adopted pay transparency legal guidelines early on, we discover that many employers ignore pay transparency necessities; roughly 1 / 4 of job listings lined by these legal guidelines fail to incorporate wage info.

Combination Pay Transparency in On-line Job Advertisements 

Throughout the US, the month-to-month share of on-line job postings with pay info has risen dramatically, from a median of 15 % earlier than January 2018 to roughly 53 % since January 2024. Within the Lightcast information, pay info is recorded within the type of an annualized higher and decrease certain of marketed wage. For many jobs posted in recent times, pay info is an precise vary. The share of job postings with the identical decrease and higher bounds (a “level wage”) has plateaued at about 15 %, as proven by the purple line within the chart under. Whereas researchers have steered potential explanations for this total pattern, notably the inclusion of an estimated wage vary by some main job itemizing platforms, we concentrate on current laws requiring employers to incorporate an anticipated beginning pay vary of their job listings. How has pay transparency in on-line job advertisements advanced within the jurisdictions which have enacted these necessities?  

Pay Transparency Necessities 

So far, ten states, the District of Columbia, and a number of native jurisdictions have adopted such pay transparency legal guidelines; the newest states to take action—New Jersey and Vermont—started implementation in June and July of 2025, respectively. Broadly, these legal guidelines require companies that publicize jobs externally to incorporate a “good religion” estimate of the wage or wage vary that they anticipate to pay. These legal guidelines are continuously proposed and written with the goal of addressing pay disparities. For instance, Massachusetts’ truth sheet for employers begins by stating that its pay transparency legislation was signed “to extend fairness and transparency in pay within the Commonwealth,” with pay transparency cited as “the most effective instruments to shut gender and racial wage gaps.” 

On this put up, we concentrate on the three earliest states to implement these legal guidelines—Colorado (January 2021), California (January 2023), and Washington (January 2023)—along with New York Metropolis (November 2022); mixed, these 4 jurisdictions account for about 20 % of all job postings throughout the US.  

The chart under exhibits the month-to-month share of job postings with wage info in these 4 jurisdictions; for comparability, the “different” line tracks the common proportion for all different states excluding New York. We take away non-New York Metropolis postings from the New York State information, because the state started implementation of a parallel pay transparency legislation in September 2023. The dashed traces demarcate when laws enforcement started. We are able to see the impression of pay transparency necessities: within the month when laws have been applied, the share of postings with wage info elevated by a median of 20 proportion factors, whereas there was an identical 27 proportion level improve throughout the complete January 2020-March 2025 interval for states with out such a legislation. We are able to additionally see that the post-transparency-legislation shares don’t attain 100%. Nevertheless, given that companies with few workers are exempt from pay transparency necessities, to what diploma does that shortfall replicate noncompliance? 

Anticipated versus Noticed Compliance 

Exceptions for small employers, non permanent assist companies, and slim circumstances of distant work indicate that employers may very well be in full compliance even when not all postings embody wage info. Particularly, employers with a nationwide headcount of fewer than fifteen staff are excluded from California’s and Washington’s pay transparency necessities. This threshold is even decrease for employers in New York Metropolis (4) and Colorado (one worker within the state). Within the panels under, the sunshine blue traces present the evolution of the month-to-month share of job postings with wage info for every state, plotted in opposition to estimates of the anticipated share beneath full compliance.  

We use two supplementary information sources to assemble these benchmarks. First, we use the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) estimates of job openings by institution measurement class to approximate the share of vacancies belonging to institutions with at the very least ten workers between January 2023 and April 2025. The ensuing estimate (80.4 %) is plotted within the panels under as a purple line.  

Noticed Compliance with Pay Transparency Legal guidelines Falls Wanting Compliance Anticipated from Legal guidelines’ Agency Measurement Exemptions

Sources: Lightcast; Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS; authors’ calculations.
Notes: The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t report institution measurement estimates by state, so we assume that this distribution is fixed throughout states. Moreover, the legal guidelines’ measurement restrictions are based mostly on agency (nationwide) employment relatively than native institution sizes. 

For a extra refined strategy, we flip to agency traits recognized by Lightcast, which embody agency measurement courses. Within the panels above, the gold line represents the common month-to-month share of Lightcast job postings in every state originating from companies with at the very least eleven workers. Though there’s minor variation throughout the 4 states, this share is roughly 87 %. From the substantial hole between the sunshine blue and gold traces, we are able to observe that whereas precise compliance with pay transparency legal guidelines is excessive, it falls in need of our back-of-the-envelope estimation of anticipated compliance.  

Even when breaking out the share of compliant postings by agency measurement class within the charts under, we fail to look at 100% compliance. If something, the biggest companies—which ought to all be certain by pay disclosure legal guidelines—are least more likely to voluntarily put up wage info in job postings previous to laws. After pay disclosure legal guidelines are applied, the shares of job postings with wage info from companies within the three largest measurement courses are consistent with the share from companies with ten or fewer workers. Taken collectively, the net postings information offered by Lightcast recommend that, as of January 2025, roughly 24 % of advertisements don’t adjust to pay transparency necessities. Echoing these findings, a number of jurisdictions, equivalent to Colorado and New York Metropolis, have performed violation investigations and issued notices or fines since these legal guidelines have been handed.  

A Substantial Share of Companies Certain by Pay Transparency Legal guidelines Stay Noncompliant

Share of postings by agency measurement (variety of workers)

Sources: Lightcast; authors’ calculations.

Conclusion 

Throughout a spread of jurisdictions, we doc that pay transparency in job postings stays incomplete a number of years after authorized mandates got here into power: almost 1 / 4 of advertisements certain by mandates in early adopting states nonetheless omit wage info. The explanations for noncompliance, nevertheless, are nonetheless unclear. Are employers unaware of the brand new guidelines requiring pay transparency in job postings or do they actively withhold the anticipated wage? Monitoring compliance solely represents step one towards understanding the response of employers to pay transparency laws.  

Richard Audoly is a analysis economist within the Federal Reserve Financial institution of New York’s Analysis and Statistics Group.

Roshie Xing, a former analysis analyst on the Federal Reserve Financial institution of New York, is presently a first-year PhD candidate in economics at Stanford College.

 @article{
        AudolyXing2025,
        creator={Audoly, Richard and Xing, Roshie},
        title={Do Employers Adjust to Pay Transparency Necessities in Job Postings?},
        journal={Liberty Road Economics},
        word={Liberty Road Economics Weblog},
        quantity={October 2},
        yr={2025},
        url={ https://doi.org/10.59576/lse.20251002}
    }