Pay Transparency Is Coming…For Better or For Worse

It started in Colorado. New York and the rest of the country are next. But, is anyone complying?

Image by author, from LinkedIn search, no rights reserved

Colorado passed the “Equal Pay for Equal Work Act” (EPEWA), which took effect in January of 2021. For this article, I shall be focusing on the requirement that employers for jobs in Colorado (either local or remote jobs which often specifically exclude Colorado) post pay ranges.

It’s been eighteen months, as of this writing, so how is it going?

First, I did some small samplings of job postings in Technology since A) that’s the industry I’m familiar with and B) that provides for a good measure of both local and remote job postings.

Three months into the new law I did my first sampling of twenty companies and found only two NGA (non-government agencies) in compliance. That was such a small percentage (10%) that I wish I had sampled prior to the law taking effect to see if this was an increase or was the pre-EPEWA norm.

In researching this, I started seeing postings from companies like Oracle that had remote job postings explicitly excluding Colorado (to avoid posting salaries).

Now, eighteen months later, we’ve seen better compliance (hovering around 50% from multiple small samples I’ve done) but we’ve also seen better “creative avoidance.”

This eBay listing, for example, does include Colorado, but does NOT list salary requirements. For a “Senior Counsel”. Hmm… According to https://www.coloradoexcluded.com/, eBay (and MANY others) have a habit of similar shenanigans.

(Side note: “Shenanigans” only has one “n”. Who knew? Okay, technically three “n”’s but you know what I mean.)

Other companies are trying their ̶b̶e̶s̶t̶ least to comply with the law:

First off, that’s a HUGE range. Second off, the disclaimer at the end “this is a reasonable (emphasis mine) estimate […] but not guaranteed.” A pay range that broad (and a disclaimer on top of it) hardly meets the objective of “pay transparency”, let alone some assurance for “equal pay for equal work.”

New York is on the brink of similar legislation. Hopefully, they’ve learned from (some of) Colorado’s mistakes. The most egregious of which is, of course, non-enforcement.

Colorado provides an online form for reporting non-compliance but has stated its focus is on education, not prosecution. This, despite companies explicitly stating they are avoiding hiring in Colorado, then seeing the lack of prosecution and returning to hiring with no salary ranges posted. According to this article, they claim “100% compliance” when asked reported companies to fix their posting.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

How sweet. “You caught me. I’ll fix that now.”

Like many other laws, it punishes the early adopters, with the full effect not being seen until it’s universal. Companies can exclude Colorado, because it represents less than 2% of the country’s population (albeit a technically savvy one). Adding New York into this mix will change things. Can nationwide companies easily exclude NY from hiring?

It remains to be seen if this is a good idea or not. Sure, the intent is righteous, but the immediate impact was reduced employment opportunities for Coloradans.

What about New York and their shiny, new law?

A quick check on LinkedIn of New York jobs shows that the first 13 came up with “pay range unavailable.”

Image by author, from LinkedIn, no rights reserved

It should be noted that the law has been delayed. It now takes effect on November 1, 2022, due to backlash.

In the meantime, if you want to have an idea of what you should be making, search for jobs in Colorado, then find a cost-of-living calculator.

Colorado’s pain doesn’t necessarily have to be yours.