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Pay Gap

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

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Massachusetts employers are required to post pay ranges for open roles starting Oct. 29.

The requirement stems from a bill that was first passed by the Massachusetts legislature and signed into law by Gov. Maura Healey in July 2024. The legislation builds on the state’s Equal Pay Act, and seeks to help close gender and racial wage gaps in the state.

How Massachusetts employers are affected by this law. 

The pay transparency provision of the Massachusetts law applies to employers with 25 or more employees who primarily work in the state, including those who are remote.

These businesses must now include a “good faith” annual salary or hourly wage range that they expect to pay for the positions they advertise. From Oct. 29 onward, employees may also request the pay range for the position they currently hold; the law bars employers from retaliating against workers for doing so. They’re also entitled to know the estimated pay range if they’re applying for a promotion or transfer.

Employers with 100 or more employees who submit EEO 

 to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must now share these with Massachusetts’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, as well. This provision took effect in February.

Where the state stands on pay transparency. 

More than a dozen states now mandate that employers include salary ranges in job postings, which has 

 to adopt this practice, even if they’re not in a jurisdiction that requires it.

Indeed data indicates many Massachusetts employers are well on their way to complying with the state’s law—more than one-half (53%) of Massachusetts job postings on the career site included salary information as of February 2025.

Whether the law will fulfill its stated goal of closing race- and gender-based pay gaps remains an open question in Massachusetts and beyond. Nationwide, women still earn a median salary that’s lower than what men earn—a difference that 

 over the past two years. And while some research indicates pay transparency laws in states like Colorado have helped narrow this gap, advocates 

 there are larger structural factors at play that businesses need to address.

Nevertheless, many HR teams now see pay transparency as a 

, a point echoed by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office in its 

 on the subject: “Beyond ensuring that workplaces in the Commonwealth are more equitable, the Pay Transparency Act will help strengthen the Massachusetts economy and its competitiveness by attracting and retaining the best talent,” the office posits.

Legislative Lowdown recurring feature illustration

Massachusetts’s pay transparency law takes effect Oct. 29

The requirement applies to businesses with 25 or more employees whose primary work location is in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts employers are now required to share salary ranges 

Kristen Parisi

Employers in the UK are limiting how much salary information they share with job applicants, according to recent data from 

In August, just 56% of job listings analyzed by Indeed had salary information, down from 65% in September 2024.

While the European Union issued a pay transparency directive in 2023 that will take effect in June 2026, employers in the UK are not obligated by law to share salary information in job listings. The decline in transparency observed by Indeed could be related to the 

 the UK is experiencing. Now, more workers are “job hugging,” and just 1 in 10 employers plans to hire before the end of the year, HR Brew 

“Some hiring managers are being reigned in a bit whenever they get into negotiations around recruiting people just because of the broader context where organizations might be having to think about redundancies or hiring freezes,” David Lorimer, partner and specialist in pay transparency at Lewis Silkin, told Bloomberg.

Even with the decline, employers in the UK are more likely to advertise salary ranges for open positions than US employers (56% vs. 48.2%, respectively), according to Bloomberg.

The US has taken a piecemeal approach to pay transparency. There are at least 

, plus Washington, DC, with pay transparency laws on the books, requiring companies to share salary ranges in job postings, which some research and many pay equity advocates have said can help reduce the 

Companies that don’t provide pay information upfront could miss out on Gen Z talent, according to data from 

, which polled 2,000 Gen Z Americans about their attitudes toward finances and found that 58% of respondents would not apply for a job that did not list a salary.

“With Gen Z becoming a larger part of the workforce, it may be time for those employers to reconsider their choice,” Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told 

. “More importantly, it may not just be Gen Z in the years to come, as more employees across generations are desiring to have a better picture of pay because of current inflationary pressures.”

Fewer UK employers are sharing salary information upfront

The decline could indicate an employer shift in hiring in a stalled economy, Indeed finds.

World of HR: Fewer UK employers are sharing salary information in job listings

A central goal of Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which passed in 2019, was to close the gender pay gap.

Colorado became the first state to require businesses to post salary ranges for open roles when the law took effect in 2021, with the aim of ensuring “that employees with similar job duties are paid the same wage rate regardless of sex, or sex plus another protected status.” As other states followed suit, they had a similar goal of eliminating disparities between what men and women earn for performing similar work.

More than five years on, the gender pay gap persists in Colorado. And while some research shows the state is making measurable progress toward closing this gap, advocates who spoke with HR Brew agree that the gender wage gap is complex, and not likely to be fixed by pay transparency alone.

Different measures of Colorado’s gender wage gap tell different stories about pay transparency’s impact.

 from 2023 shows a gender wage gap of 82% for full-time wage and salary workers. That’s three percentage points lower than the year Colorado’s pay transparency law took effect, when women working full-time earned 85 cents on the dollar, compared to full-time male workers in the state.

 conducted by economist Max Tejera on behalf of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, which lobbied for the pay transparency law, tells a more promising story. That research, which looked at average earnings of full-time workers and controlled for a number of factors, found the average gender wage gap in the state narrowed from 78 cents in 2021 to 85 cents in February 2024. As of July 2025, the gap had narrowed even further, with women earning 86% of what men in the state earned, according to more recent figures shared by Tejera.

Tejera told us he controlled his analysis for variables including education, age, race, and industry. Though estimates like the one provided by the BLS can be useful, this calculation of the gender wage gap may be “overly simplistic,” in Tejera’s view, as it doesn’t take into account other types of factors that contribute to it, such as race- or age-based discrimination, or 

. When controlling for these variables, “I found that Colorado had a reduction of about eight cents on the dollar,” making “four times the progress on the gender wage gap than the US as a whole.”

Though Tejera said he believes his research indicates pay transparency will “move the needle” toward closing the gender wage gap, he doesn’t see them eliminating it entirely.

“There are large structural factors in the economy that pay transparency won’t eliminate that lead to women being paid less than men,” he said, citing phenomena such as 

, which refers to the decrease in earnings women typically experience after having children, and the 

 problem, which helps explain why men tend to choose higher-paying occupations with more intense scheduling demands.

Louise Myrland, who advocated for pay transparency as VP of programs for the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, echoed this point.

“The pay transparency laws really seek to address the way that bias can play into pay determinations, but there are so many other contributing factors that result in women being paid less on average than men in our economy,” she said. Achieving full gender equity in the workplace will require additional structural support, such as improved 

Whether pay transparency closes the pay gap, laws like Colorado’s have already had a substantial impact on the way HR teams approach compensation. In conversations with us, HR professionals reported seeing knock-on effects of pay transparency play out in areas such as recruitment and hiring strategy.

With access to salary information, job seekers are “able to really hone their job search and the time that they put into thoughtful applications for employment to those jobs that they know will meet their earning expectations,” said Myrland. At the same time, “employers are seeing the benefit of more efficiency in the hiring process,” because they’re able to match with candidates whose salary expectations align with what the company is offering.

Emilie Aries, founder and CEO of BossedUp, a leadership development and career services company based in Denver, said she’s seen a meaningful difference in how her clients negotiate salaries post-pay transparency. She recalled coaching her clients on how to navigate the “song and dance” of getting a prospective employer to share the starting salary or pay band for a role first. If the job seeker was to come out with a salary objective that was $20,000 less than the employer had budgeted, they could “severely undercut themselves,” she said. Now that companies have to show their salary cards upfront, “we don’t have to play that game anymore,” she added.

Closing pay gaps still remains a focus of many firms, particularly if pay transparency unearths inequities that can’t be explained. When companies are successful in closing these gaps, they’re eager to tout this achievement “as part of their recruitment strategy,” said Kelly Voss, head of rewards and career advisory with the professional services firm Aon. Wolters Kluwer and SAP North America were among the companies 

 whose HR leaders pointed to such results.

Voss expressed optimism that pay transparency will eventually result in a narrowing of the gender pay gap, in part because younger generations are beginning to see this as a vital part of a company’s “employee value proposition.”

“I have two sons, and they tell me what their friends make, and commonly talk about compensation,” she said. “That’s the world in which they live in, and differences in pay based on gender, ethnicity, race are just not going to be acceptable in their world.”


An illustration of the Colorado state flag with a coin being magnified

Why pay transparency hasn’t yet fixed Colorado’s gender pay gap

Advocates agree the disparity between what men and women earn won’t be fixed by pay transparency alone. 

Pay transparency is about more than closing the gender pay gap 

The gender wage gap widened in 2024 for the second consecutive year, according to new figures released by the US Census Bureau.

Women working full-time earned a median salary equivalent to 81% of what their male counterparts earned in 2024, down from 83% the year prior, according to 

. The median man working full-time saw his earnings climb to $71,090, up 3.7% from the previous year, while the median salary for women stayed flat, at $57,520.

This is the first time the gender pay gap has widened for two years in a row—a worrying trend for advocates that hoped policies like pay transparency would help lessen this disparity.

Pay transparency laws that began taking effect in some states in the US about five years ago have 

 to share information about how they pay their workers—and in turn, correct wage gaps within their organizations that can’t be explained by legitimate factors, like differences in experience or education.

But the gender wage gap persists in the US workforce due to a variety of factors that can’t be fixed by HR teams alone. Women 

 in low-paying occupations, and tend to take career breaks more frequently than men, which in turn 

 to perform the lion’s share of housework and caregiving in their households, which may lead them to make decisions that could affect their wages, such as working part-time or prioritizing a flexible schedule.

Such disparities even cycle up to the C-suite, where compensation for executives in female-dominated positions—notably CHROs—trends lower, HR Brew 

 in senior leadership roles, in part because they lack the proper support to ascend to higher levels in their organizations.

There’s a fear that “the gap will only continue to widen as DE&I programs and protections are cut, weakening the very structures designed to create equity,” Tracy Ariail Aldworth, board president with Women in Technology, 

HR teams can consider certain benefits and programs to mitigate trends that perpetuate the gender pay gap, according to sources who’ve spoken with us previously. Subsidized childcare and flexibility, for example, are often cited as features that can help women stay in their jobs for longer, and move into higher-paying roles.

Being transparent about the tradeoffs that may come with certain career decisions, too, 

 make more informed decisions about their jobs.

Two workers stand on stacks of coins, one much taller than the other

Why the US gender pay gap widened, again

Employers can prioritize benefits that may mitigate trends that perpetuate the gender pay gap, such as a lack of access to childcare.

The US gender pay gap widened for the second year in a row

It’s well known that full-time working women in the US 

 than their male counterparts, bringing in 83 cents on the dollar, on average.

The gap is even wider when accounting for women in part-time roles, a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute finds, with women earning 27% less than men by the 10th year of their career, or 73 cents on the dollar.

MGI researchers identified two factors that explain most of this pay gap: lost time and differing career trajectories. To mitigate this trend, HR leaders should be transparent with workers about how certain career decisions may affect their salary potential, and focus on creating an organizational culture that promotes internal mobility, a lead author of the report told HR Brew.

Why women’s earnings lag behind men’s. 

While women switch jobs at a similar frequency to men, they take career breaks more often, and for longer periods of time.

In 2022 women worked 37.8 hours a week, on average; by contrast men averaged 40.6 hours. The MGI analysis found women spent 509 days away from paid work, due to career breaks, contributing to a 14% gap of work experience over 10 years, compared to men.

The study doesn’t explore the reasons women spend more time away from their jobs than men, but from separate data we can glean it’s likely due in part to responsibilities that tend to fall more heavily on the female workforce, such as caregiving. Employed US women with children under six years old devoted 2.15 hours a day to caring for them in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while men spent 1.58 hours a day doing so, on average.

What’s more, women acquire skills and experiences that put them on different career pathways from men, ultimately translating to lower career earnings, MGI found. When women change jobs, they’re more likely to choose lower-paying roles with less competition and more flexibility. This helps explain why a man who starts his career as a customer service representative might ultimately become a financial manager earning a salary in the top quintile, while a woman who begins in the same role might only advance to a sales floor supervisor role earning a third quintile salary.

“Both men and women end up switching around quite a lot, and in America, the labor market is pretty fluid,” Anu Madgavkar, a partner with MGI, said. “So it’s not that you’re stuck or frozen in your entry level job, but it’s the kind of switches and progression that you do that really does determine your pay.”

There are myriad issues that contribute to the gender pay gap, and HR certainly can’t fix all of them.

Simply being transparent about the tradeoffs that come with certain career moves is a good HR practice. If a firm places a pay premium on jobs with a higher level of competition and less flexibility, “that is important information to employers as well as employees,” Madgavkar said. “The starting point is really to be clear about, what is it that we’re valuing in the job, and why are we paying what we’re paying?”

Employers can work toward creating an “organizational culture that promotes people learning and trying new things,” Madgavkar suggested. Without this type of culture, talent pipelines can get clogged and good employees may fall by the wayside, she said.

Designing upskilling programs that are inclusive in nature is another way to boost female representation in senior roles, Sarah Steinberg, head of global public policy partnerships at LinkedIn, 

 last year. Investing in caregiving resources, such as onsite or subsidized, may help as well.

Large-scale dollar sign ripped and creating a gap between a male and female business worker. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Getty Images

These 2 factors account for most of the gender pay gap 

While women switch jobs at a similar frequency to men, they take career breaks more often, and for longer periods of time, a recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute finds. 

Two factors account for most of the gender pay gap. Here’s what HR can do about them. 

Adam DeRose

The only resolutions HR and compliance heroes care about are those inked in the lawbooks.

HR pros are ringing in the new year in style…by updating internal policies and ensuring their organizations are compliant with new laws and regulations or big changes to old ones.

“It’s really a great time to be thinking about bigger questions, like what those new compliance requirements mean for your organization and how can you use those to your advantage?” said Helena Almeida, VP and managing counsel at ADP, who oversees its HR and benefits team.

Nearly half of US states and dozens of local jurisdictions will 

 will also see changes to sick leave laws. New York employers must offer 20 hours of paid prenatal leave to employees.

“There’s a lot of activity that’s going to happen at the state level when it comes to minimum wage, but also when it comes to things like worker classification, independent contractor status, and maybe some independent contractor rights that are going to require employers to really stay diligent,” Almeida said.

In November 2024, a DOL rule that would have increased the minimum salary threshold for exempt employees to qualify for overtime pay 

 in the courts, suggesting the previous threshold, set in 2019, is likely to go back into effect.

Employers in Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Vermont will soon be required to comply with 

“Illinois has passed a job transparency bill that goes into effect January 1. Within that bill, they now require that employers with 15 or more employees include a pay scale as well as benefits for position in any job posting, and they have a series of requirements…in addition to the regular pay scale like wage or salary,” said Jocelyn King, 

, a compliance software startup that helps HR pros stay compliant.

“It’s progressively becoming more and more common, and I think it's also something that’s continuing to be refined by states…to make them a bit more holistic and higher scope, like including benefits in job descriptions, for example,” she said.

Almeida told HR Brew the expected activity in the new year will be focused on state legislatures rather than Washington D.C., adding that absent efforts at the federal level, some states may look to include pay reporting requirements in their transparency laws.

“You really need to start looking at your pay strategy and looking at your data so that you can communicate effectively what that strategy is,” she said.

New York City spearheaded its Local Law 144 of 2021 that regulates the use of “

.” The EU passed sweeping AI regulations this summer. 

 state to regulate AI technology to protect against “algorithmic discrimination.” Almeida predicts others to explore protections in 2025.

“We’re getting into the meat of the AI legislation-regulatory revolution, both in the United States and abroad,” Almeida said. “Legislators are really trying to grapple with how to deal with this technology and how to make sure it’s used in a way that’s fair to employees, fair to job applicants. I think that scrutiny is particularly high in the HCM industry because HR technology really deals with vital aspects of a person’s livelihood.”

King expects the federal government to eventually develop its own governing law, but it remains unclear if that will be accomplished in 2025.

 appear in the developing corpus of AI legislation: a focus on notice and transparency, a focus on bias mitigation, and human oversight, according to Almeida.

“While I think it can be daunting to companies who try to comply with laws of many different countries or many different states at the same time, these themes that are carrying through all the laws are really going to be where companies are going to want to focus their compliance attention,” Almeida said.

“Sign up for an email distribution list through SHRM, for example, where you’d be getting emails with all of these changes. There are some law firms that have a similar email distribution,” King said.

The VirgilHR platform notifies users when regulations or laws change or take effect, and features a compliance calendar in the platform, which includes summaries of all the coming changes, searchable by state or keyword, and sample language for customers to use to update their employee handbooks.

“There are technology products out there that help you with this as well, VirgilHR being one of them, and they help you stay a little more organized, because all of these laws changing all the time make it really difficult to track,” she said.

cartoon man and woman looking at giant lawbook

What to expect next year with regulations and compliance

Compliance experts weigh in on their regulation expectations.

Theresa Agovino

Pay transparency laws will take effect in five states next year, bringing the total states with legislation to help end salary gaps to 14, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).

Several other states are considering similar legislation, Paycom reported. Meanwhile, a handful of cities, such as Toledo, OH and Washington D.C., have enacted such laws.

“There is a cultural phenomenon that we are witnessing,” said Da Hae Kim, state policy senior counsel for the NWLC.

Indeed, even companies that aren’t directly affected by the laws are releasing information about salaries, said Mariann Madden, co-lead of pay equity at WTW. She said expectations of more state laws are pushing companies to release more salary data. And while Madden doesn’t anticipate any new federal legislation, she said that companies operating in the EU are readying to comply with sweeping pay transparency legislation that goes into effect in June 2026.

Three-quarters of North American companies post hiring rates or ranges for external job candidates, while 69% divulge them to internal candidates, according to a WTW report issued in September. Nearly 90% of companies that provide the rates or ranges do so all over the country and not just in select locations.

“The writing [is] on the wall in terms of the increased legislation across the US,” said Madden, encouraging employers, “rather than ignore what is happening outside of their own backyard, to be ready for it.”

Women working full-time throughout the year typically earn only 83 cents for every dollar earned by a man, 

. The situation for women of color is even worse. Black women working full-time, year-round typically make only 

 for every dollar earned by white non-Hispanic men, while Latinas earn only 

The five states that will start enforcing their laws in 2025 are Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Vermont. All the laws are different, though there are several that have some common factors such as requiring pay ranges to be listed on job ads. Madden said that most of the laws focus on job seekers—something she believes should be amended so current employees also have access to information. She said workers can become distrustful of their employers if applicants receive more information they can’t access.

Madden added that the laws should carry teeth to ensure companies comply.

“If there’s not a big enough fine or repercussion for not complying, some organizations will wait until they’re absolutely slapped with something to comply with the provisions,” Madden said.

Pay transparency laws have only been in place for a few years, so Kim says it is too soon to tell whether they have helped close the pay gap. However, a Women’s Foundation of Colorado 

 earlier this year found the pay gap in the state decreased by seven cents since its law was implemented in 2021. Now women earn 85 cents for every dollar earned by a similarly qualified man, up from 78 cents. That equals about $3,000 annually. The report added that California shrank its pay gap by three cents since its law was enacted in 2023, while Washington narrowed its gap by five cents.

US map with dollar signs hovering over highlighted states.