Pay gaps have lasted for decades, and secrecy about what people earn is part of why they’re so hard to see and so hard to challenge. Salary transparency, meaning posted pay ranges and open pay information inside organizations, used to be a proposal. It is now becoming the legal default in much of the world, so the question has shifted from whether to require it to how to do it well.
Where things stand
In the EU, only four member states (Slovakia, Italy, Malta and Lithuania) had full national law in force by the 7 June 2026 transposition deadline. The European Commission has refused twice to delay or simplify the directive, and employers with 150 or more employees must report by 7 June 2027. In the US, there is still no federal pay transparency law, but more than a dozen states and Washington, D.C. require employers to post salary ranges in job listings. Colorado was first, in 2021. Remote job postings fall under these laws in most states where the work could be performed.
Why it matters most for people with the least information
Negotiation runs on information, and people who have been underpaid are the most likely to guess low. The National Women’s Law Center, citing data from one online job platform, reports that women of color state dramatically lower minimum salary requirements than white men, white women and men of color. A posted range replaces that guess with a real number.
There are early signs that posting ranges shifts pay upward. A study of Colorado found that more companies shared salaries in their postings and that the posted salaries rose 3.6%. That measures posted pay, not what people ultimately earned, so it’s a promising signal, not proof. Employers report benefits too. In a Society for Human Resource Management survey cited by the National Women’s Law Center, 70% of organizations that list pay ranges said it brought more applicants, and 66% said it improved applicant quality.
What the research shows, and what it doesn’t
The strongest evidence comes from related policies, not posted job ranges specifically. When Canadian provinces made university faculty salaries publicly accessible, the gender pay gap fell by roughly 20 to 40 percent. A Danish law requiring larger firms to report pay by gender narrowed the gap by about two percentage points, or 13%. Results aren’t universal: two studies of Austria’s pay-reporting reform found no meaningful effect on the gap. Direct evidence on posted ranges is newer and still relatively scarce.
There is also a real tradeoff. Several studies find that transparency narrows the gap by slowing wage growth among top earners, without necessarily raising women’s earnings. That is a reason to pair transparency with a review of pay bands, so employers close gaps by raising pay where it is too low and not by flattening everyone. Most of the strongest studies measure gender gaps, and evidence on racial gaps is thinner, though the underlying mechanism, better information for the person negotiating, does not depend on gender.
Making it work
Posting a range is the first step, not the last. A recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that women strongly preferred postings with narrower salary ranges and negotiated less assertively, while a wide range such as $60,000 to $110,000 leaves applicants unsure where an offer will land. The encouraging part: adding context about typical starting pay and how final offers are determined eliminated the gender gap in both who applied and how assertively people negotiated.
That points to a practical standard for employers:
- Post good-faith ranges. California defines the pay scale as a good-faith estimate of what the employer reasonably expects to pay, and overly broad ranges, such as $50,000 to $200,000, may not comply with transparency laws.
- Add context on where new hires typically land and how offers are set.
- Review internal pay against the ranges you publish, and fix gaps you find.
- Handle privacy concerns through policy. Posted ranges reveal no one’s individual salary, so they are a good place to start.
The path forward
Transparency will not close every gap. Job segregation, caregiving penalties and biased hiring all sit outside what a posted range can fix. But it gives every candidate the same starting fact, and it forces employers to be able to explain their pay. Done well, with honest ranges and real context, it moves the advantage in negotiation toward the person who has always had the least information.
Updated on September 26th 2026
