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Applying for a new job is always a venture into the unknown, but when it comes to the pay on offer, that uncertainty is lessening. Salary disclosure in US job ads appears to now be the norm. New data from job marketplace Indeed shows that as of August more than half of US job postings on the site included a salary range.
Pay transparency laws have recently spread across the US, taking effect in Colorado in 2021, New York City in 2022, and California and Washington states this year. New York state enacted its own law yesterday. But the trend to more openness about pay may also reflect a growing awareness that pay transparency is good for business.
Indeed surveyed US job seekers earlier this year and found that 75 percent of them would be more likely to apply for a job if it included salary data. Postings that included pay rates attracted 30 percent more applicants on the site. “With the tight labor market, pay transparency seems to be one of the new tactics employers can use to attract workers,” says Cory Stahle, an economist at Indeed who conducted the study.
The New York law that took effect yesterday is intended to address pay inequity and requires employers with four or more workers to include on job ads the precise pay rate or a range that they believe in “good faith” to be accurate. It applies to employees who work in New York as well as remote workers who report to New York-based supervisors.
When New York City’s law went into effect in November, some employers tested the “good faith” requirement. A job post from the financial services company Citi went viral for offering a range of $0 to $2 million, although the company later called it an error. Still, spreads ranging from $50,000 to $180,000 for a reporter job or $197,000 to $366,000 for a VP of marketing strained credulity.
Companies appear to set wide ranges to avoid ceding their bargaining power. Stahle says such shenanigans may be shortsighted, given that listings with narrower salary ranges appear to attract more applicants. When he looked at the width of salary bands on job ads that included them for the 12 months ending April 2023, he found that tighter job markets tended to correlate with narrower bands, perhaps because employers were forced to make their listings more attractive. Over that period, in-demand occupations such as childcare and food service saw their salary ranges narrow the fastest.
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On the flip side, salary bands widened considerably in more employer-friendly markets, including the tech hubs of San Jose and Seattle. After the industry cut hundreds of thousands of jobs in late 2022 and early 2023, employers may not have felt compelled to be very precise, says Stahle. Listings for software developers had among the highest salary spreads, with a 35 percent gap between the high and low pay rates.
When Colorado first enacted its pay transparency law in 2021, some employers balked, refusing to hire workers in the state. Now that more than a quarter of US workers are covered by some form of salary disclosure law, with more likely to follow, that’s no longer feasible.
Some employers may also be starting to see the benefits of openness and voluntarily sharing salary information. In addition to attracting more applicants, research shows that salary disclosure improves candidate quality, boosts retention in some cases, and can help narrow the gender and racial wage gaps. It can also benefit smaller employers: Indeed found that candidates were more likely to apply for jobs at companies they didn’t recognize if they posted salary information.
But salary transparency can also have unintended consequences, according to analysis by Todd Zenger, a business professor at the University of Utah. As he and Indiana University business professor Tomasz Obloj write Harvard Business Review, studies suggest that the practice lowers overall wages because it gives employers cover to avoid negotiating for higher pay. Bosses can more easily fend off an individual request for a raise when they can claim that a negotiation for one is a negotiation for all.
Other studies show that pay transparency can also reduce pay gaps between high and low performers, causing potential dissatisfaction and turnover among talented staff. And transparency pushes employers to reward measurable metrics over potentially more important qualities like cooperation and helpfulness. When National Hockey League players learned that their pay was largely based on offensive performance metrics, their defense tanked, and overall performance declined.
While removing the guesswork about compensation is meant to smooth the negotiation process, it can also have the opposite effect. Weiting Liu, who runs Arc, a job search platform for software developers, says that many applicants overestimate their qualifications and request salaries at the top end of the range. “This poses additional challenges for employers, as they need to come up with reasons to explain why they don’t meet the qualifications for the top salary,” he says.
Nonetheless, pay transparency is catching on. Indeed’s data shows that every US state increased its disclosure rate over the past year, and five states did so by more than 20 percentage points. Three were states that had passed state or local laws—California, Washington, and New York—but the list also included Vermont and South Dakota, neither of which mandate pay disclosure.
Stahle hypothesizes that this is because of their proximity to states that do have laws in place, New York and Colorado. Employers may want to attract commuters or remote candidates in those states, he says. He also found that pay transparency increased in states that simply proposed laws, which both of these states have.
It remains to be seen how useful that data will be if the labor market cools, potentially widening the ranges employers advertise. “There may be ups and downs over time,” says Stahle. “But salary transparency is here to stay.”
Updated 9-18-2023, 12.15 pm EDT: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Cory Stahle's name.
