We’ve talked about pay transparency before. It’s that thing where job postings have to give a salary range so everyone applying knows what they’re getting into. It’s been implemented in more and more places over the last couple of years, so we’ve now got some data to look at to see how it’s going.
Here are Five Fast Facts on the early results of pay transparency laws:
- 🤔 Where Is It Happening - Pay transparency laws have been set up in California, Colorado, and Washington State, as well as a handful of large cities. Over 25% of American workers are now covered by these laws.
- ❓ How Much Is It Happening - Job megasite Indeed.com says that almost half of all their job postings contain a pay range, up from 20% before the pandemic.
- ❓❓ Why Did It Happen - The intent was to protect minorities by preventing companies from hiring at one pay rate for certain folks and another pay rate for other folks.
- 🔄 The Employer Reaction - In a completely shocking turn of events, employers have started offering pay ranges that are so wide as to be useless. For example, Netflix postings for jobs in California range from $60k - $500k. Oh so helpful!
- 📈 The Trends - Economists researching the laws say that postings for jobs that are remote or higher paying are trending to wider ranges. Jobs that are for lower-paid positions and in-person are trending toward smaller ranges. This could be due to normal market pressures - industries that have had layoffs can hire people without posting precise salary ranges, but industries with too few workers have to put more information out there to attract good people.
🔥Bottom line: This is all still very new information, and these are just the early trends. One other trend is that seven of the 10 largest cities with the most widening ranges are in places with pay transparency laws. We will learn more as time goes on, but it is interesting to consider these trends even with limited early information.
What do you think of these early results, and of pay transparency itself?
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