Salary Transparency Laws by State, and What Job Seekers Should Know

There's still no federal law requiring a company to post a salary range. What exists instead is a patchwork of state laws, and as of early 2026 it covers more ground than most candidates realize.

Roughly 17 states plus Washington, D.C. now require some form of pay disclosure during hiring. That list includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state. Delaware has passed a similar law, but it doesn't take effect until September 2027. This list keeps growing year over year, so treat any specific count as a snapshot, not a permanent fact.

The laws aren't identical, and the differences matter. Some states, including Colorado, Illinois and New York, require the range to appear directly in the job posting itself, for every employer regardless of size. Others, like Connecticut, Nevada and Maryland, only require disclosure if a candidate explicitly asks for it, meaning a posting with no range listed isn't necessarily violating anything, it may just be following a different state's "upon request" model. Employer size also matters: California's law kicks in at 15 or more employees, New York State's applies even to companies with as few as four.

One detail worth knowing if you're looking at remote roles: most of these laws apply based on where the job could be performed, not where the company is headquartered. A remote posting from a Texas-based company can still be legally required to list a pay range if the role is open to candidates in California or Colorado.

Many of these same states also ban employers from asking about your salary history during the hiring process, a separate but related protection meant to stop past underpayment from following you into a new role.

If you're applying to a posting in one of these states and don't see a range, that's worth noticing. It could be an oversight, a third-party job board failing to carry the range over from the original listing, or a company simply not complying. None of those are good signs on their own, but a company's track record matters more than a single posting. Patterns of consistently vague, range-free postings, especially in a state that legally requires one, say something concrete about how seriously a company takes its own hiring obligations.