Pay Transparency Laws by State: A 2026 Employer Compliance Guide

The Posting Due Friday and the Salary Range You Haven't Built Yet

Your recruiter just sent a Slack message: the job posting for the new Senior Project Manager goes live tomorrow. The role is remote-eligible, candidates in Colorado and New York are welcome, and your employment attorney asked last week whether you have documented methodology behind your ranges. You have a spreadsheet, a gut feeling, and a Glassdoor tab open.

This is the exact moment pay transparency laws by state stop being an HR policy curiosity and start being your Friday problem.

As of 2026, more than 16 states and Washington, D.C. mandate that employers include salary ranges in job postings — with more jurisdictions joining the list and enforcement activity increasing (Paycor / Nesco Resource, 2026). The laws differ in their employer-size thresholds, range-format rules, record-keeping periods, and penalty structures. A range that is compliant in Washington State may fall short of what California or New Jersey requires. A multi-state remote posting triggers multiple legal standards simultaneously.

By the end of this guide you will know exactly which US states and Canadian provinces require posted salary ranges right now, what each law specifically demands, and how to structure a defensible range that holds up to scrutiny — whether that scrutiny comes from a job applicant, a regulator, or your own legal counsel.

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Why Pay Transparency Laws by State Are Not One-Size-Fits-All

Every pay transparency law operates on three axes: who it covers, what it requires in a posting, and what happens when you don't comply. Understanding each axis is essential before you draft a single posting.

Who it covers is defined by employer-size thresholds that vary by jurisdiction — from Colorado's "at least one employee in the state" to New York State's "four or more employees" to Massachusetts's "25 or more employees in the state." A company with 12 employees may be exempt from one law and covered by three others depending on where those employees sit.

What it requires differs substantially. Some jurisdictions (Washington State, Illinois) require a wage scale or pay range plus a general description of benefits or other compensation. Others (Colorado, New York State) require only the salary or salary range. British Columbia prohibits open-ended ranges ("$20/hr and up") outright. Ontario caps the allowable spread between a range's minimum and maximum at $50,000 unless the role pays above $200,000.

What happens when you don't comply depends entirely on the issuing authority and the violation count. Penalties are per-jurisdiction, per-posting, and often per-violation — meaning the same non-compliant role advertised across five platforms can generate multiple simultaneous violations. These details change frequently; always verify the current rule with the relevant authority or legal counsel before acting.

With those axes in mind, here is the state-by-state picture.

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Active Pay Transparency Laws by State: The US Jurisdictions You Need to Know

Colorado

Statute: Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (SB19-085), effective January 1, 2021; amended January 1, 2024. Coverage: Employers with at least one Colorado employee. What the posting must include: A salary or salary range and a description of benefits and other compensation. Penalties: Fines of $500–$10,000 per violation; each non-compliant posting is a separate violation (Colorado General Assembly, SB19-085, 2019). As of July 1, 2024, 1,634 complaints had been filed and $238,000 in fines assessed (Trusaic citing Colorado CDLE, 2024). Verify current rules with: Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE), cdle.colorado.gov.

Colorado was the first state to enact a salary-posting mandate and remains one of the most actively enforced. For a deeper look at what Colorado specifically requires — including how "at least one employee" is interpreted for remote roles — see our Colorado Pay Transparency Law guide.

California

Statute: SB 1162 / California Labor Code §432.3, effective January 1, 2023. Coverage: Employers with 15 or more employees, with at least one in California (National Law Review / ArentFox Schiff, 2023). What the posting must include: The pay scale for the position. Each posting on a third-party job platform can be a separate violation — the same role listed on five platforms without a range may constitute five violations (Employment Law Aid, 2026). Employers must also maintain job-title and wage-rate history records (Employment Law Aid citing CA Labor Code §432.3, 2026). Penalties: Civil penalty of $100–$10,000 per violation (California Legislative Information, 2022). Verify current rules with: California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), dir.ca.gov.

California's multi-platform interpretation makes it one of the highest-exposure jurisdictions for employers who rely on aggregator job boards. Our California Pay Transparency Law guide breaks down the platform-by-platform implications.

New York State

Statute: Labor Law §194-B, effective September 17, 2023. Coverage: Private employers with four or more employees, for jobs performed at least in part in New York State (NY State DOL, 2023). What the posting must include: A salary or salary range. Penalties: Up to $3,000 per violation, escalating at $1,000 / $2,000 / $3,000 for first through third or subsequent violations (SixFifty / Trusaic, 2026). Verify current rules with: New York State Department of Labor (DOL), labor.ny.gov.

New York City has a separate, older ordinance in effect since November 1, 2022, enforced by the NYC Commission on Human Rights, with civil penalties up to $250,000 per violation (Trusaic, 2025). If you post roles open to NYC candidates, you are operating under both the state and city frameworks simultaneously. See our New York Pay Transparency Law guide for a side-by-side comparison.

Washington State

Statute: Equal Pay and Opportunities Act, effective January 1, 2023; amended July 27, 2025. Coverage: Employers with 15 or more employees. What the posting must include: A wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits and other compensation (WA L&I, 2025). Penalties: Statutory damages of $100–$5,000 per applicant, plus attorney fees; L&I civil penalty up to $500 for the first violation, up to $1,000 for subsequent violations (Epstein Becker Green, 2025). Verify current rules with: Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I), lni.wa.gov.

Washington's July 2025 amendment introduced private right of action — meaning affected applicants can sue directly, not only file with L&I. Our Washington Pay Transparency Law guide covers the amendment's practical implications for multi-state employers.

Illinois

Statute: HB 3129 amending the Equal Pay Act of 2003, effective January 1, 2025. Coverage: Employers with 15 or more employees. What the posting must include: Pay scale and benefits information. Penalties: Escalating fines of $500 / $2,500 / $10,000 for first, second, and third or subsequent violations; a 7-day cure period applies (MMR Ltd. citing HB3129, 2025). Employers must retain pay-scale and benefit information and the posting for each position for five years (Greenberg Traurig / Illinois DOL, 2024). Verify current rules with: Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL), labor.illinois.gov.

Illinois's five-year record-keeping requirement is one of the longest of any US jurisdiction. That means a posting for a role you filled in 2025 could be called into evidence during a 2030 audit — making documented methodology, not just a posted number, essential.

New Jersey

Statute: Pay and Benefit Transparency Act, effective June 1, 2025. Coverage: Employers with 10 or more employees working 20 or more calendar weeks. What the posting must include: Pay ranges and benefits information. Penalties: Civil penalties of $300 for the first violation, $600 for each subsequent violation (Ogletree Deakins, 2025). Under proposed regulations, the spread between a range's minimum and maximum may be no more than 60% of the minimum (Saiber LLC, 2025). Verify current rules with: New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (DOL), nj.gov/labor.

New Jersey's proposed 60%-of-minimum cap on range spread is worth monitoring closely. Under that rule, a range with a $60,000 minimum could have a maximum of no more than $96,000. If adopted as final, it would make overly broad ranges a compliance risk in addition to a credibility problem. Confirm the status of that rule with the NJ DOL before posting.

Massachusetts

Statute: An Act Relative to Salary Range Transparency, effective October 29, 2025. Coverage: Public and private employers with 25 or more employees in Massachusetts. What the posting must include: Pay ranges in postings. Penalties: Escalating consequences — warning / up to $500 / up to $1,000 / up to $25,000 for first through fourth or subsequent offenses; a two-business-day cure period is available through October 29, 2027 (Mintz, 2025). Employers with 100 or more Massachusetts employees must also submit EEO/workforce demographic and pay data annually since February 1, 2025 (Choate Hall & Stewart / Mintz, 2026). Verify current rules with: Massachusetts Attorney General's Office (AGO), mass.gov/ago.

Massachusetts's cure period expires October 29, 2027 — after that date, first violations no longer receive a warning.

Washington, D.C.

Statute: Wage Transparency Omnibus Amendment Act, effective June 30, 2024. Coverage: Private employers of any size with at least one D.C. employee. What the posting must include: Minimum and maximum projected pay. Penalties: Civil fines of $1,000 / $5,000 / $20,000 for first, second, and subsequent violations (Mercer, 2024). Verify current rules with: DC Office of Human Rights, ohr.dc.gov.

Washington, D.C. is notable for two reasons: it applies to employers of any size — no minimum employee count — and it uses the phrase "projected pay," which requires employers to think about how the range reflects actual expected compensation for the position, not simply the broadest possible band.

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What's Coming: Delaware in 2027

Delaware is scheduled to join the list of jurisdictions with active pay transparency laws in 2027 (Paycor / Nesco Resource, 2026). If you have employees or candidates in Delaware, begin building documentation now. Confirm the statute and effective date with the Delaware Department of Labor before acting.

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Canadian Provinces: British Columbia and Ontario

US-based employers with Canadian operations or candidates, and Canadian companies of any size, face separate provincial frameworks. Canadian wage data referenced in any salary-range methodology must use Statistics Canada NOC (National Occupational Classification) wage figures — a different taxonomy from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics SOC codes, reported in Canadian dollars (CAD), and cited separately from any US figures.

For specific provincial wage percentiles, consult the Statistics Canada Employee Wages by Occupation (NOC) dataset directly at open.canada.ca.

Source: Statistics Canada, Employee Wages by Occupation (NOC). Reproduced and distributed on an 'as is' basis with the permission of Statistics Canada.

British Columbia

Statute: Pay Transparency Act, effective November 1, 2023. Coverage: All employers posting publicly advertised positions in British Columbia. What the posting must include: The expected salary or wage, or a range. Open-ended ranges are explicitly prohibited — formats like "$20/hr and up" or "up to $30/hr" do not comply (Stikeman Elliott, 2023; MLT Aikins, 2025). Reporting requirement: Employers with 50 or more BC employees (as of January 1, 2026) must publish an annual pay transparency report by November 1, 2026 (Mercer, 2023). Verify current rules with: BC Pay Transparency office, gov.bc.ca/paytransparency.

BC's prohibition on open-ended ranges is a stricter format requirement than any current US jurisdiction. A range must have a defined floor and a defined ceiling.

Ontario

Statute: Pay transparency rules effective January 1, 2026. Coverage: Employers with 25 or more employees. What the posting must include: Expected compensation or a range. A posted range cannot exceed $50,000 unless the role, or the top of the range, pays over $200,000 annually (Littler, 2025). Record-keeping: Employers must retain each publicly advertised posting for three years after it is taken down (HRPA, 2026). Verify current rules with: Ontario Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development, ontario.ca/labour.

Ontario's $50,000 range-spread cap is the most specific range-format constraint in the jurisdictions covered here. An HR Manager posting a Logistics Coordinator role at $55,000–$115,000 would be in violation — the spread of $60,000 exceeds the cap. The practical effect is that broad-banded "cover everything" ranges are not a compliant shortcut in Ontario.

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What a Defensible Salary Range Actually Requires

Posting a number satisfies the letter of most pay transparency laws by state. Posting a defensible number — one you can explain to a job applicant, justify to a regulator, and document for an attorney — requires a methodology behind the number.

A compliant salary range is typically anchored to a market median (the wage at which 50% of workers in a comparable occupation and geography earn more and 50% earn less), then extended into a band using a range spread (how wide the band is, expressed as a percentage of the midpoint or of the minimum). The US Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (BLS OEWS) program produces employment and wage estimates for over 800 occupations, constructed from a sample of approximately 1.1 million establishments — and is the most widely accepted free, authoritative source for US market anchors (BLS, May 2025). Wage estimates are available for national, state, and metropolitan geographies.

For a step-by-step explanation of how to translate BLS OEWS percentile data into a compliant range — including how to handle the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentile anchors the BLS reports — see our guide on how to build a salary range.

For a consolidated breakdown of what each jurisdiction requires you to include in the posting itself — beyond just the number — see what to include in a salary range posting.

Illinois's five-year and Ontario's three-year record-keeping requirements make clear that the posting is a document, not just a line of text. The methodology behind it needs to be preserved alongside it.

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The Compliance Exposure You Are Actually Managing

Pay transparency penalties are per-jurisdiction, per-posting, and in some cases per-applicant. The exposure is not theoretical: Colorado had assessed $238,000 in fines on 1,634 complaints as of July 1, 2024 (Trusaic citing Colorado CDLE, 2024). New York City's enforcement ceiling of $250,000 per violation (Trusaic, 2025) is in a different order of magnitude than New Jersey's $300 first-violation civil penalty (Ogletree Deakins, 2025) — but the volume risk in New Jersey is that each posting on each platform can generate a separate violation.

For a full breakdown of how penalties are structured across jurisdictions and how enforcement activity has trended, see our pay transparency penalties explained guide.

The cost of a missed posting is one category of exposure. The cost of a range that cannot be documented — one built on a gut feeling rather than a named dataset and a defined methodology — is another. When your employment attorney asks how you arrived at the number, "we checked a few job boards" is not a defensible answer.

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Build a Compliant Range for Every Active Jurisdiction

Managing pay transparency laws by state across a multi-state or multi-province workforce is a documentation problem as much as a legal one. The laws tell you what to post. They do not provide the methodology for arriving at a number that holds up to scrutiny — that part is yours to build and defend.

If you are navigating multiple active jurisdictions and need a structured starting point, the Pay Transparency Resource Hub consolidates the statute-level details, enforcement contacts, and methodology frameworks in one place.

For a ready-to-use set of templates — including a range-build worksheet anchored to BLS OEWS data, a posting-checklist by jurisdiction, and a documentation template for your audit file — download the Pay Transparency Compliance Kit from the Salary Range Builder store.

The kit was built for HR Managers and People Operations leads at companies with 10 to 200 employees who need to post defensible ranges without a dedicated comp team or an enterprise software budget. It covers the jurisdictions detailed in this guide and includes instructions for the methodology documentation your attorney may eventually ask to see.

Download the Pay Transparency Compliance Kit →

If you would prefer to build and document ranges directly inside a software workflow — with BLS OEWS data pre-loaded, jurisdiction-specific formatting, and a PDF audit trail — see our pricing page for plan options starting at $199 per month, with a 14-day free trial.

Pay transparency laws by state are not standing still. Delaware is coming in 2027. Ontario's employer obligations take effect January 1, 2026. Massachusetts's cure period ends in October 2027. The best time to build a defensible methodology and a documentation habit is before the next posting goes live — not after the complaint arrives.