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How Well Are Pay Transparency Laws Being Followed? Introducing the U.S. Pay Transparency Index 2025
Governments worldwide have adopted pay transparency legislation as a way to improve pay equity, and in many regions, the United States is following this trend. In under a decade, the U.S. went from having no pay transparency laws to legislation that covers about 40% of the working population.
These laws give current employees—and also potential employees, like job seekers and applicants—insight into an organization’s pay rates and processes, ultimately reducing pay discrimination based on demographic factors. Many employers support this idea, especially since pay transparency can help cultivate high performance culture.
However, the U.S. is a uniquely challenging context for pay transparency legislation. Even when and where laws are passed, it’s difficult to tell how well employers are actually complying with them.
To answer this question, beqom created the U.S. Pay Transparency Index. We evaluated over 13,000 job listings in 12 different cities, assessing their compliance with pay transparency. This blog covers our key findings.
A complicated landscape: Pay transparency laws by state and local governments
First, here’s some big-picture context for pay transparency in the United States. Because of the nation’s legislative framework, most laws are passed at the state, city, or other local level, covering only the individuals and/or organizations within their boundaries.
Several issues then arise:
- Employers, employees, and job seekers may be unsure which laws apply to them. Requirements could depend on the state where the employer is based, the state where the employee lives, or both. Remote work and job markets spanning multiple states can thus add to the complexity.
- The laws themselves differ: for instance, some require pay ranges in job postings and others require pay information before the interview.
- Criteria are often poorly defined. Some laws require employers to provide a “reasonable pay range” but don’t specify what “reasonable” means.
- When job seekers are uncertain about the law, they are unlikely to file a complaint against an employer. And since enforcement of most pay transparency laws depends on such complaints, enforcement is lacking.
How we developed the U.S. Pay Transparency Index
We examined 12 jurisdictions that differ geographically, economically, and in terms of their pay transparency laws.
- Eight jurisdictions have laws mandating full transparency. Covered employers must include pay ranges in their job postings.
- Two mandate partial transparency or loose transparency. Employers must disclose pay either after the interview or after a job offer.
- Two jurisdictions have no mandatory pay transparency. This is the case in many U.S. states and cities.
For each city, we examined a sample of job listings from several major job search sites. Then we classified each job listing based on whether it was fully compliant, partially compliant, or non-compliant with pay transparency requirements.
The “partially compliant” category lets us see the listings that do provide a pay range, but one that’s too wide to actually be useful. (The difference between the top of the range and the bottom is more than 33% of the bottom.) A partially compliant job posting may indicate that the employer wants to appear transparent, but has not provided meaningful numbers.
Altogether, we evaluated 13,303 job listings.
What we found
Our first key finding is that less than half of job listings (45%) included a meaningful pay range.
We also found that pay transparency laws make a huge difference: employers in jurisdictions where pay transparency is law were almost twice as likely to post a pay range in their job listings.
But perhaps the most surprising finding is that many employers are not complying. On average, in jurisdictions where pay range information is required (including Washington D.C., New York City, and Denver), almost a quarter of listings did not have it.
We also found that there was no link between historical and political context and pay transparency compliance. In other words, the most politically progressive jurisdictions do not necessarily have the best compliance rates.
Lastly, we found that the job postings that include pay information tended to be higher-paid jobs. Job postings for median wage or minimum wage jobs were less likely to follow pay transparency practices.
For other key findings, see our summary infographic.
Our key takeaways
While the U.S. has made significant movement towards pay transparency, there are some major issues with legal implementation and compliance.
First, our finding that employers were more likely to be transparent when posting higher-wage jobs is troubling: it implies that pay transparency laws are not helping the people who need them the most.
In addition, our results indicate that employers who want to follow pay transparency practices face an uphill battle. The burden falls on employers, and especially on their HR personnel, to navigate a maze of regulations and interpret the unclear parts. Meanwhile, competitors may be acting unscrupulously and getting away with it.
Based on our work in compiling the index, we see an argument for a single, unified framework for pay transparency in the United States. However, regulation at the national level may never happen – unless organizations and professionals take the initiative to envision a regulatory framework that all states can adopt.
We compiled the U.S. Pay Transparency Index to investigate the effectiveness of pay transparency laws in the United States – and the results show that there's still a long way to go. Adopting and enacting pay transparency best practices will help companies build high performance cultures within their organizations. If numerous employers within the U.S. all do the same, the needle will move towards better outcomes nationwide—for employers, employees, and job-seekers.
How PayAnalytics by beqom can help your organization become a pay transparency leader
Firstly, we encourage you to read the complete version of the U.S. Pay Transparency Index. We covered a quick summary here, but the full report includes city-by-city and state-by-state figures, more information about the markets we analyzed, and more in-depth analysis of the findings.
We also have a number of other resources to support your organization’s pay transparency journey. One good place to start is our guide to U.S. pay transparency laws by state. Then take a deeper dive with our ultimate guide to pay transparency.
Compensation software solutions can also provide essential support for your pay transparency work. Successful pay transparency requires a salary structure that is logical, internally consistent, and based on gender-neutral criteria, and we designed PayAnalytics by beqom to give users the insight they need to establish this crucial foundation.
If you’d like to see how PayAnalytics by beqom can help you become a pay transparency leader in any U.S. state or jurisdiction, book a demo anytime to speak with one of our pay equity experts.
