EP 147: Salary Range on Job Postings - What the Law Requires in 2026 | HR Compliance Series Ep. 2

PodcastDon't Waste the ChaosHR StrategyHR for Small Business
Written by Kerri Roberts

Series: HR Compliance Series (2 of [8]) · Host: Kerri Roberts · Run time: ~24 minutes

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Episode Summary

Do you have to post the salary range on a job posting? The answer lies entirely in where the work can be done.

Most owners assume this is a "my state" question. If you're hiring in Missouri, there is no state law requiring a posted range. But the same company, the same role, and a candidate or employee in Colorado or New York means completely different rules, and leaving the range off can turn into a class action lawsuit.

In this episode, Kerri breaks down the federal baseline, the roughly 14 states plus DC with pay transparency laws, the remote role trap that catches employers who think none of this applies to them, and what a missing range has actually cost companies. Then she gets to the part most compliance content skips: why posting the range is smart even when nobody is forcing your hand, and how to build the pay bands underneath so you can post with confidence.

The law is the floor. The smart move is usually well above it.

In This Episode

  • Why there is no federal law requiring pay on job postings, and what the Equal Pay Act actually covers

  • Which states require the range in the posting, and which require it on request or before the offer

  • The remote role trap: why where the job can be worked matters more than where you sit

  • What a missing pay range costs, including the wave of Washington class actions

  • Why 91% of job seekers say pay affects whether they apply, and who you lose when you leave it off

  • Why you can't publish a range you haven't built, and how pay bands become your proof

  • How a compensation study benchmarks your people and sets a pay strategy by role

  • The one question to ask about every active posting this week

Chapter Timestamps

0:00 Do you have to post the salary range?
1:00 Welcome and the disclaimer (not an attorney)
2:22 Laws change fast: who keeps you current
4:00 The federal baseline: no federal posting law
4:35 The states that require it in 2026
6:58 The remote role trap
7:45 What it costs: the Washington class actions
9:16 Why post the range even when it's not required
12:10 Build your pay bands before you publish a range
13:54 How a compensation study works
16:19 Posting with confidence (and Missouri's 30-day pay cut notice)
20:58 Your action item this week

Resources Mentioned

Episodes in the HR Compliance Series

Your Action Item

This week, pull up every active job posting you have and ask one question: could someone in a pay transparency state fill this role? If the answer is yes, the range belongs on it. If you don't have a defensible range yet, that's your real to-do: start building your internal pay bands.

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Full Transcript

Do you have to post the salary range?

Now here's a question that I get asked often, and that is do I have to post the salary range on the job posting? And that answer lies entirely on where the work can be done. Is that what you thought I was going to say? Probably not. And you know what? 10 years ago, that's probably not how I would have answered it either. HR and HR law and compliance law has evolved and continues to evolve.

So I'll say I'm recording this in the fall of 2026, but you're gonna want to always check to see what those updated laws are. But it depends entirely on where that job can be worked. Is it gonna be worked in Colorado, New York? Then yes, you have to have it posted there. That's the way this works. Leaving it off can turn into a class action lawsuit. What in the world? Am I serious? Yes, I have been seeing these pop up. What about if you're hiring here in Missouri? That's where I'm recording this episode.

As of 2026, there's no state law that's requiring you to do so. So you could be the same company, same role, different state, or your employee is in a different state, is what I'm saying. And that means completely different rules. So today I want to make this understandable for you. What's the law, what it actually requires, state by state, and the smart move that you should make even when nobody's forcing your hand. So welcome back to another episode of Don't Waste the Chaos.

Welcome and the disclaimer (not an attorney)

I'm your host, Kerri Roberts. I have been doing HR in operations for well over 20 years now. Spent most of my career in corporate. And then about four years ago, I went out on my own, focusing entirely on building HR foundations for small to mid-sized businesses. And I saw this when I was in corporate. I see it now, of course, when I'm working directly as a consultant with clients. And so I want to make sure to bring some of this information to you, but quick and very important.

This is general HR education. I have to say this. I am not an attorney. Employment law, compliance law changes fast and furiously. It changes by state. Sometimes it changes by city. Missouri had a paid sick leave law that popped up last year, which was 2025. And employers were scrambling to put it in place. They were going to require a separate sick bank instead of just an overall paid time off bank. And by the time it took place, we already knew that it was getting voted out.

Laws change fast: who keeps you current

This stuff is changing fast and furious. So you've got to stay up to date on it. And if nobody in your organization is doing it, make sure that you're linking up with a benefits broker or an HR person or you have an attorney that you work with on the regular because this is stuff that's going to impact you for your company. If you need to check your state labor agency, the Department of Labor is a great place to start on a federal perspective, but you want to have it on a state perspective and you need an employment attorney.

And that's not me just covering myself. It's exactly what you want a real HR partner to say to make sure that you're compliant. I mean, that's just the reality. So let's get into it today. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to my channel. I'm on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Buzzsprout, anywhere that you can find your shows, but make sure to subscribe. I put out new episodes every single Tuesday. And I do series usually. So right now we're in a compliance and law series. The series before this was about AI, implementing AI in your business.

Lots on the HR side as far as like what policies you need, how to roll out, how this impacts the middle manager, so on and so forth. So highly recommend you go back and look at those.

The federal baseline: no federal posting law

So let's get into salary ranges on your job postings, which is what we're focusing on today. I want you to start with a federal baseline so you can stop guessing. And there's no federal law that's requiring you to post pay. Not right now, that's not happening. None. No federal law. The federal floor is the Equal Pay Act. And so essentially, based on a Title VII Equal Pay Act that came out in 1963, it says you can't pay people differently for the same work based off of, let's say, race, gender, you know, all of those things. Equal pay.

That's not about publishing today. That's about equal pay. So the feds aren't forcing a range on your job ad. That's not how this is coming up. Once you know that, everything gets simpler, in my opinion. It becomes a state question, not a federal one. Sometimes there's federal laws, sometimes there's state laws, sometimes there's county laws, city laws. I always say look at the federal first, because if that's the one that's the most stringent, we're going to need to follow that. We want to follow the most stringent law. But federal doesn't require salaries to be on job postings as of right now. They just want you to pay people equitably, right?

The states that require it in 2026

So who does actually require it? As of 2026, we've got roughly 14 states plus DC that have pay transparency laws, and about a dozen require the range right in the posting. So 14 have pay transparency laws, 12 you've got to put it right in the posting. So here's what we've got: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington, and DC.

Now, here's some information about a few more: Connecticut, Nevada, Rhode Island. They make you share it on request or at a minimum before the job offer, which makes sense. And this is moving very fast. Illinois and Minnesota just kicked this off January 1, 2025. That's when this first landed. New Jersey on June 1, 2025, Vermont on July 1, 2025, Massachusetts joined them at the end of October 2025.

California tightened its rules again. So they went forward, then they changed their rules again in January of 2026. This is a living list. This is not a one and done. I anticipate this to continue to change and evolve over time. So again, you need to stay on top of it.

The remote role trap

So here's the trap that catches most employers. And this is the one that most people miss. "I'm in Missouri, so none of this applies to me." I get where people are coming from, but that's wrong.

It's generally not about where you sit. It's about where the job can be done and where you're specifying. So if you sit in Missouri and you are saying this is a remote role, no, the state of Missouri doesn't require you to post the salary range. But when you post a remote role and you're attracting candidates in any of those states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington, and DC), then you can still be on the hook for this for a remote role. Unless you're saying you're not going to hire people in those states. Okay.

Post a remote role that someone in Colorado or New York could fill, and the law can reach your posting, even if your state doesn't require it. One remote listing can put you under a dozen different rules at the exact same time. Here's the clean fix. Decide up front which states you're open to hiring in and build to the strictest one. So if you're open to hiring in a state that has a strict law about this, you need to just post the salary range. I'm gonna get further on that in a minute.

What it costs: the Washington class actions

Let me talk about what I always talk about, which is HR metrics being finance metrics. I was doing some research on what this could cost you. If you're an employer, let's say that this doesn't apply to, but you post a remote role, so then it automatically applies to you, or you're an employer that's operating in one of those 14 states that I said, and you're not compliant on this as well. This is where it stops becoming paperwork.

I was reading about this case. Washington is this cautionary tale that we all need to be paying attention to. State of Washington. Once its posting law took effect, applicants filed dozens of class actions. And at the time, each of them could seek up to $5,000 per applicant for a posting that had no range. That's wild to me. So in the state of Washington, an applicant could file, and this was going class action, and they were collecting five grand per applicant. That applicant, it's not like they got declined. This isn't a discrimination case against these folks. This is literally like a storm chaser, an ambulance chaser, those type of things where you're like, okay, I can be your attorney and I'm gonna get you money. Some people do this.

And I mean, I get it. Laws are laws, and there's a reason why the laws are there, and you should, as an organization, comply with the laws, but it got messy. The state later dialed it back to a $100 fine, up to a $5,000 fine. But plenty of employers got sued before that softening and had to pay. A missing pay range is not a formatting choice, like, "we don't populate that in the form." It's a line item with a dollar figure attached, and I saw lots of dollars go out the door when I was reading through these cases and these claims.

So this is something we have to pay attention to. This isn't like, "I don't have a formal HR person, so hopefully I'm not really worried about that." Sometimes I hear clients say this: "If we get caught, we've got insurance for that." And it's like, is this the way you want to operate? That sounds really stressful. I know it's hard, but come on.

Why post the range even when it's not required

So, why would you post the range when it's not required in your state and it's not a remote role? This is where I'm gonna get on my soapbox a little bit. This is a true HR pro's perspective, not what does the law say or what's someone forcing you to do. There's a number of different reasons why this matters, because the law is the floor, my friend. When there's a law put in place, it's the floor. The smart move is usually higher above what the law is.

LinkedIn found 91% of US job seekers say that whether they see a salary range affects if they'll even apply. I would agree with that. There's been seasons in my life over the past 20, 25 years where I've been shopping around, like, ooh, I see that so-and-so posted, you know, a head of HR or a COO. Wonder what it's paying. No range, don't care. You're missing out on great candidates. A lot of times, a good candidate's not going to apply.

Maybe not always, but usually people who are a little bit more desperate are gonna go ahead and wing it. Maybe it's because they followed your organization for so long and they just love you and they really want to work there. I hope that's the case for you. But in a lot of situations, it's the people who are like, "I mean, we'll see. I'm desperate. I don't have a job." 91%. So if you're in a no-law state, leaving it off is keeping you from getting the people. It's not about safety.

I don't want you to put this on there just for legal's sake. I'm going through this compliance series because it's important that you stay compliant. I want you to meet the minimum requirements. But for each one of these things, what I really want to get into is the meat and potatoes of why you want to do it, because it's a good HR practice. And so a lot of people leave pay bands, pay ranges off their postings because why? Pregnant pause.

You don't have them, right? I know this. As an HR pro, I know that you don't have pay ranges. That's why you're not posting it. I also know that you're underpaying a number of your people because they've been with you for a long time and new candidates are more expensive, but you don't want the people who have been there to be pissed because you're posting the pay range higher than what you pay them. So what are you doing? Don't you want to keep your people?

If you lose them, there's all kinds of data out there, but 140% is kind of the rough data that I see to replace a good person. A good person. Sometimes we want to let people out the door. But most generally, to replace a good person is 140% of their annualized salary to get them replaced and that person up and running. Let's keep our good people. If you aren't putting a pay range in, one, because you don't have them, let's build them. And two, if it's because the pay range is higher than what you're paying your current people, let's do some salary adjustments, shall we? Some performance reviews, some salary adjustments, and let's retain your good people. It's shrinking your applicant pool and it's making you negotiate blind here.

Build your pay bands before you publish a range

But you can't publish a pay range that you haven't set. That's the major problem. You get the foundation done first. You have to get your internal pay bands straight. Then you have to decide what you can publish. The range on the ad is the proof. The pay band underneath is the foundation.

How do I set a pay band? I have done episodes prior about compensation and pay, so I highly recommend that you go back and listen to those. And I'm going to try to link the episodes that I have on that in the show notes. But just real quick, I do compensation data studies for clients. And when I'm doing that, I have the client give me the name, the start date, the current pay, the last pay increase, the reason for the last pay increase, and the job title, of course. I have them send that over to me in an Excel document.

I partner with an organization that publishes pay bands. I know you can get that from AI, and you know I'm an AI girl, but there's an organization that partners directly with HR payroll softwares, and every 12 hours it's pulling live, updated pay ranges attached to job titles, with demographic information and years of experience attached to job descriptions. So I've got really good pay data that I utilize. I pull down the 10th, 25th, mean, 75th, and 95th percentile for every single role based off of the job title that you give me. And then I plot where your person is at inside of that range.

How a compensation study works

And so then I'm gonna show you what your compensation strategy is. If you've never articulated it before, I'm gonna say in general for roles like this, you pay at the mean, or you're paying at the median, or you pay at the 75th percentile. Let's start putting some method to the madness. Like, I'm seeing that you're paying this title at the 90th percentile. Why? And you tell me it's hard to retain or it's hard to recruit or it's highly specialized or whatever it is. Great. Then we're gonna say in general, we pay roles with this job title at the 90th percentile on average, if they meet the minimum qualifications. Boom, we've got a pay strategy for that role. We're doing that with every single position in the organization.

Usually I notice that there's some job titles that look underpaid or overpaid. And I'm gonna ask you some questions on those. Generally, what I see is the job title doesn't actually match the job duties. So we've got a mis-titling, because you either don't care about titles and you've just kind of let people pick their own titles, or they're archaic, or for a number of different reasons your titles are inflated. I see that very often. We're calling people directors when they're really managers, calling people managers when they're team leads. I see that kind of thing. So then we're level setting our job titles or we're making notes: we're actually benchmarking to a coordinator when we're calling this person a manager. I wouldn't recommend that you do that. But anyway, this is why we're benchmarking where we're at. So that way we have a clear strategy.

Once we have the strategy down and it's intentional, then we look to see if we need to level set anyone's pay because we're underpaid in certain areas, or if we've got somebody overpaid, or we wanted to increase responsibilities, or we wanted to put tiers in place. I had a law firm that put tiers in place for paralegal. So we had Paralegal I, II, and III. And that justified the $20,000 pay gap that we had with people. And it showed people that they had career growth opportunities, and it clarified how they could grow. That was also beautiful.

Once we get all of that down, then we can name our pay ranges. And I'm telling you, that feels like something that you want to keep private in your accounting team and your HR team. But when you have this level of clarity, you're actually so freaking proud of it that you're more open to posting that information, because it's not by default. It's by design, and it's beautiful. So we want to get to that structure so you have that level of confidence. It's going to help you recruit better people. It's going to help you retain better people.

Posting with confidence (and Missouri's 30-day pay cut notice)

It's also going to help you when somebody comes to you and says, "I got a pay increase offer somewhere else for $18,000 more." You can look at the pay range and you can say, gosh, they're already paid kind of at the top of the range. I think they're being unrealistic, like, good luck at the other employer. Or you're going to say, with additional responsibilities, we could give you additional pay. Are you wanting to step up to that? Or you can say, we actually do pay them kind of at the 25th or the mean, and so we could bump them up if they're performing.

Do you have good performance reviews capturing that data? And do you have a clear philosophy on raises, increases, promotions, documentation on all of that? This all plays out together. This is why you need a good HR foundation. But we want you to be posting those ranges with confidence, not because of the law. The law gets put in place to protect employers and employees. Different laws for different segments, right? Usually it's because there's a problem that causes some kind of discrimination or something, and so they put a law in place to protect that. That's the minimum floor of what you want to be doing. You want to be doing more than the law. You want to be a great employer. You want to be a great place to work.

Here in Missouri, there's no state law requiring you to post a range, but the close cousin to this is a rule that you have to give an employee 30 days written notice before you cut their pay. That's a law in the state of Missouri. There's a lot of different compliance laws around pay. So nobody's forcing your hand on postings, but I just want you to think about this: not required doesn't necessarily mean smart. Those are two different things. And if you're hiring remote, Missouri being quiet about it doesn't protect you from the employee in Colorado that you're picking up.

And when I've got a client who's posting across state lines, the first thing that I'm doing is looking at their current pay range of what their current people are making. And my clients usually know what that information is if they've gone through an HR audit with me and then we've worked through six months to a year of engagement. We've nailed down all of these foundational pieces. So then we're able to say, what's the range for this role? Does what this person is wanting fall inside or outside of it? And do we feel confident to post this?

That's data that you should be posting out there anyway. So many roles are remote. It's gonna have to get there. The state by state thing is kind of becoming a moot point, in my opinion. If you've just realized that you have remote employees working in six different states and you're like, son of a gun, give me a call if you want me to help set it up, or share this episode with the person in your office that handles this kind of thing and just make sure that they're covered, or call your employment attorney and ask what you should be doing to make sure that you're protected. It's completely fixable.

You don't want to have to track 50 states to get it right. I totally understand. So like I said, I like to practice to the most stringent. Same thing with employers who have 20 employees. Are you required to give FMLA to employees? No. Why would you not? What's keeping you from doing that? If you have a standardized process and a way that you can track it, policies around it, and clarity, then it's actually easier to do that than it is to say, no, you can't take leave, and then maybe there's a discrimination case in there, and who knows what. So I would rather just write the policy, make it very clear, and then hold yourself to it. But again, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, gosh dang, this is just another reason why it's so hard to be a business owner, I understand.

That's what people like me are here for, or hiring an HR practitioner. And if you're thinking, when is it time to hire an HR person into my organization? The general rule of thumb is for every 100 employees, you would have 1.04 HR pros at your organization. So sometimes I have a client who'll come to me and they've got 30 people and they're like, "Do I need a full-time HR person?" Usually I would say no. You would work with somebody fractionally like me, and I would partner first with the CEO to get everything set up. But then after that, I would train your office manager, or if you have an ops manager or somebody at your organization who kind of says grace over how things run, I would train them on the practices. And then once we get that audit done and the foundation built, then you step down with me, and you've just got me essentially on a retainer. You can call me when issues arise. We've got a scheduled monthly call. And we back down on price, of course, when that happens as well. So you don't have to do it alone, but you do have to do it.

Your action item this week

So here's what I recommend that you do this week: pull up your active job postings if you have any right now and ask this question: could someone in a pay transparency state fill this role? And if that answer is yes, then the range belongs on it. You need to get the range on it. Next week we're gonna take on one that quietly costs companies the most that I see, and that's the 1099 contractor who's actually a W-2 employee, and the back pay bill that comes with getting that wrong.

So if you're listening and you want to connect on consulting and you're ready to move forward, you can reach out to me at saltandlightadvisors.com/contact. If you want to see generally, with a real quick freebie, where your HR practices are at, I've got a real quick survey that you can do for free at saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit. Or if you're like, "No, girl, I'm ready to hop in," let's go ahead and do that comprehensive audit. Just contact me.

You know I also have my book, and that helps you set up your HR foundation. It's The HR Easy Button. You can find it on Amazon or on my website. And I do have my coursework out there, you guys. For so long I had the HR Foundations coursework and the HR Operating System coursework out. But I just recently launched my Strategic HR coursework, which is really exciting. So if you go to saltandlightadvisors.com/resources, you can see all of the different bundles.

Each one of those bundles comes with four courses. And each one of those four courses comes with three or four downloadable tools and resources that go along as supplemental with the training content that you get from me. It's essentially a recorded video of me teaching on the content. So you get the taught content, then you get to download three or four resources that go along with the content. That's a great thing to have your office manager do, if you have an entry-level HR person, or if you've got a payroll person who also says grace over HR. That's a great place to start if you're not ready to hop into a consulting relationship with me.

Get that coursework. It's very affordable. The Foundations course is $49. The other two are $69 each. So very, very affordable. Pick up my book, pick up the coursework, or give me a call, and make sure to tune in next week when we jump into the 1099 contractor beast. Are they a contractor? Are they a W-2 employee? Do you know? How do you know? Let's get into it. I know that understanding the compliance piece of HR is not what you got into business for, but this work is worth it. So don't waste the chaos, friend. Embrace it. I'll see you next Tuesday.

Resources To Keep Building

If you've got a job posting live right now and aren't sure it holds up, take the free HR Audit to see whether your hiring and pay systems are actually set up to protect you. → saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

Resources to keep building:

🎯 Take the free HR Audit — Score your HR systems in 5 minutes and see exactly where your gaps are.
👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/hraudit

🎙️ Listen to Don't Waste the Chaos — This episode. More at the show feed.

📚 Explore the HR coursework — Self-paced courses, tools, and resources to build your HR systems step by step.
👉 saltandlightadvisors.com/resources

✉️ Get the Monday Email — One practical idea for leaders, every Monday at 5:28am. 1,000+ leaders, 50%+ open rate.
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Kerri Roberts https://saltandlightadvisors.com
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EP 146: HR Compliance Checklist - The 6-Question Self-Check | HR Compliance Series Ep1