The landscape of pay transparency is quickly changing across the country. Many states have enacted new laws requiring job postings to include defined salary parameters. The intended goal of the new laws is to combat racial and gender pay disparities. This means that as more and more agencies are distributed and look to hire remote employees, multiple state laws could apply to your job postings.
What are the Latest Pay Transparency Laws?
As an agency owner looking for new talent, you need to make sure your job postings comply with the various new laws. Similar to most employment laws, each state decided to go their own way and nothing is uniform.
As a result, compliance is just that much harder for companies. Let’s look at a couple different examples.
California
The new law went into effect in January of 2023 and requires companies to include a “pay scale” in any job posting. This means you need to list the salary or hourly wage range that you reasonably expect to pay for a position. You don’t need to list benefits, but you do need to include information about piece rate and commission wages.
The law applies if you have at least fifteen employees. If you violate the job posting requirements, you could be on the hook for up to $10,000 per violation.
New York City
This ordinance goes into effect in September of 2023 and requires companies to include a “range of compensation” in any job posting. If you have four or more employees, then you need to comply.
This ordinance also applies to promotions and transfer opportunities in addition to general job advertisements. The city can enforce civil penalties if you fail to comply, but the amounts for violations aren’t yet public.
How Your Creative Agency Can Stay Compliant with Multiple Pay Transparency Laws
Several other states (and cities and counties) already have these laws on the books with more to come. But since these laws are new, there is not a lot of guidance or test cases interpreting them. Specifically, guidance is lacking on whether they apply based on a company’s or employee’s location. We will have to wait and see.
For now, we recommend a better-safe-than-sorry approach. Comply with the most rigid pay transparency requirements for your job postings regardless of where your company is located. That means putting a detailed and realistic pay scale in each job posting. Reach out to anyone on the Matchstick Team if you have questions or want to make sure a specific job posting is compliant.
