Wage gap continues to drive pay transparency initiatives

This past April, in her first oversight meeting before the U.S. House of Representatives, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Charlotte Burrows was asked whether the EEOC intends to return to its brief and controversial practice of collecting pay data from employers. She hedged her answer, refusing to give an outright “yes.” She explained the commission would wait to hear from the National Academy of Sciences on the topic before coming to a decision.

However, Burrows talked at length about the significance of pay data for closing the wage gap for minorities and women, giving the overall impression that pay data collection will soon return. In her view, pay discrimination is easier to identify and combat when wages are made public in some fashion.

State legislation

Unsurprisingly, legislators at the state level share Chair Burrows’ enthusiasm for tackling the wage gap through pay transparency. Yet newer pay transparency state laws and legislation go far beyond what the EEOC would require by mandating public disclosure of pay information in job postings.

In Washington, legislators recently amended the state’s existing pay transparency law to require that employers disclose a wage scale or salary range along with benefits information in all job postings. The prior iteration of the law had entitled applicants to salary information only after a job offer was extended. The job posting requirement will go into effect January 1, 2023.