The steady rollout of pay transparency laws across U.S. states and cities continued in 2025, with at least six such laws taking effect this year alone and a seventh — Delaware — set to begin in late 2027.
Lawmakers nationwide enacted pay transparency laws in the past decade that share some similarities while containing wrinkles that vary by jurisdiction. HR Dive spoke with management-side attorneys for better insight on how employers can sharpen their compliance efforts.
1. Know where your workforce is
Multistate compliance frequently proves a challenge in HR, but employers might not realize they are obligated to comply with certain pay transparency laws, according to Kristi Nelson Foy, shareholder at Ogletree Deakins.
That’s because some of the laws apply to employers that advertise any remote-work positions capable of being performed by candidates in a given jurisdiction. Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, for example, applies to any employer that employs at least one person in the state, which could serve as a compliance trigger for organizations with remote workforces.
A good place to start then may just be to ensure HR knows where employees are physically located, Foy said. This can be accomplished in part by running an employee census on an annual or more frequent basis.
2. Create a ‘pay philosophy’
Employers also may want to consider creating and adopting what other compensation experts have called a “pay philosophy,” which encompasses the employer’s strategy for determining workers’ initial pay as well as pay for performance.
Those in charge of setting pay may consider several factors, including a candidate’s skills, education and training, and how each influences placement on a given pay band. To aid in this work, Foy said employers should seek market research that allows them to benchmark those pay bands against what competitors offer.
It’s also important to both ensure pay parity between workers who hold the same job titles, as well as determine which pay bracket on a given pay scale the employer is comfortable paying. For instance, an employer may not have the financial resources to pay at the top end of the market for a given role, Foy said, but it might be more feasible to pay within the 50th or 70th percentile of the market.
“Make that decision, and ensure you’re consistently enforcing that range,” Foy added. “That, in turn, will also help establish the pay bands that you are going to put onto your job postings.”
3. If you’re multistate, be aware of the most stringent laws
The list of states with pay transparency laws now numbers well over a dozen. Employers with operations in multiple such states may need to look at the most stringent laws and ensure their policies comply with them, Foy said, even if that means the employer would disclose more information than it would need to in other jurisdictions.
It’s often more desirable for national employers to adopt this more streamlined approach, she continued, given the risk for error in an alternative approach like adapting job posts to comply with specific states’ rules.
For example, Massachusetts’ law states that employers need only include the salary or pay range of a given position, whereas others specify disclosure of additional information such as employee benefits or incentive compensation, said Lyndsey Kruzer, partner at Cooley LLP.
Different laws also are likely to evolve over time. In New Jersey, regulators for the state’s labor department issued proposed rules under the state’s pay transparency law in September specifying, for instance, that the maximum of a given pay range cannot exceed the minimum by more than 60%.
“These laws are being interpreted on a daily basis, and employers really need to be on top of this,” Foy said.
4. Be as prompt as possible when responding to violations
Employers notified of errors in their job postings often must correct them, per pay transparency law requirements. Typically, employers are not fined for their first violation, Foy said, be it a missing pay range, an incorrect range or some other miscue.
One of Foy’s clients posted jobs prior to the Jan. 1 effective date of Illinois’ law. When the new year began, the client started receiving violation notices regarding those older posts, she said. Small fixes to job-posting software such as a “posted-on date” feature could help avoid such headaches.
Otherwise, the turnaround time for violations is often fairly quick. Illinois, for example, grants employers a “cure period” of 14 days for first-time violations and seven days for second violations.
5. Be prepared to address discrepancies
Employee expectations are helping drive a cultural shift on pay transparency. But as current employees gain more insight into how their employers decide pay, HR should anticipate that they will receive new questions and concerns, Kruzer said.
One of the most obvious inquiries is that employees may feel their pay doesn’t match up with what the employer advertises for new workers. HR should be the point of contact for such questions, Kruzer said, and it should have a ready answer articulating what factors the organization considers when setting pay.
Kruzer gave the example of a job for which the range is $70,000 to $90,000. If a current employee asks why they are at the lower end of the range, HR should be prepared to state the influence of variables such as skills, seniority, level of education or geographic location.
“And if companies run into issues where they don’t know that they have a great answer to that and there may be an issue, that’s where they can reach out to legal counsel, and it may be a situation where adjustments have to be made,” Kruzer said.
Not all factors are considered legitimate in certain jurisdictions. Massachusetts’ Equal Pay Act, for instance, recognizes a limited list of factors that may lawfully permit differences in pay for comparable work. Negotiation, Kruzer noted, is not one of those factors, so Massachusetts employers may not justify pay differences on the basis that one employee asked for a higher salary when another did not.
That employees might inquire about discrepancies is a reminder that HR should consider taking time to do internal housekeeping and ensure employees are properly paid within established pay bands that are competitive with the rest of the market, Foy said.
