Hiring restarts this week
The week after Labor Day is when frozen requisitions reopen and postings that sat idle through August go back up. Before yours does, check whether it carries a pay range. If it does not, you have a compliance problem in a growing number of states and an efficiency problem everywhere else.
In California this is not a preference
California Labor Code section 432.3, amended by Senate Bill 1162 and effective January 1, 2023, requires employers with fifteen or more employees to include the pay scale in any job posting. The fifteen employee threshold is met if the employer reaches fifteen employees at any point in a pay period and at least one employee is located in California.
The statute defines pay scale as the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position. Two details trip employers up more than any others. The range must appear in the posting itself, not behind a link and not behind a code a candidate has to scan. And if a staffing agency, recruiting firm, or job board posts on your behalf, you are required to give that third party the pay scale, and the third party is required to publish it. Outsourcing the posting does not outsource the obligation.
Penalties run from one hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars per violation, assessed on the totality of the circumstances including whether the employer has violated the section before. There is a meaningful grace provision: for a first violation of the posting requirement, no penalty is assessed if the employer can demonstrate that all job postings for open positions have been updated to include the pay scale. That is a strong argument for fixing every open posting at once rather than one at a time.
California is not alone. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia now carry some form of pay transparency requirement. The rules vary, and remote postings generally pull in the strictest applicable law across every location where the work could be performed, which means a multi state or remote first employer is usually complying with the toughest standard by default whether or not it intended to.
Set the law aside, the operational case is stronger
Most employers who resist publishing a range are not thinking about statutes. They are worried about three things: that current employees will see the number and get upset, that candidates will anchor to the top of the range, and that competitors will learn what they pay.
The third concern is largely obsolete. Competitors already know, because candidates tell them. The second is manageable with a range that reflects what you would genuinely pay rather than an aspirational ceiling. The first is real, and it is worth sitting with, because if publishing your range would upset your current team, the range is not the problem. The internal pay decisions are the problem, and the posting is only the thing that surfaced them.
What omitting the range costs you
A posting with no number does not filter. It collects applications from people whose expectations sit far above what you will pay and from people who would have accepted less than you budgeted, and it gets skipped entirely by strong candidates who have decided not to spend time on postings that will not say.
You pay for that twice. Once in screening hours spent on candidates who were never going to accept. Then again, more expensively, in the finalist who withdraws at offer stage over a number you could have published in week one. That second cost includes every interview hour your team spent, the runner up who has since taken another role, and the weeks the requisition stays open. We have written about how unclosed and stale requisitions corrupt your hiring data, and offers that die on compensation are a common contributor.
What the research shows
Research published in November 2025 examining jurisdictions after transparency laws took effect found that disclosed salaries rose by 3.6 percent, and that actual earned salaries rose by 1.3 percent across the board, including for incumbent employees who never changed jobs.
Read that honestly rather than selectively. Transparency does apply modest upward pressure on pay. If your entire compensation strategy depends on candidates not knowing the market, disclosure will cost you something. What it buys in return is a pipeline of people who already accepted the number before they spent a minute in your process, and a compensation structure you can defend to the people already working for you.
If the range feels too wide to publish
The most common objection is that the role could pay anywhere from the low end to nearly double it depending on who applies. That is not a disclosure problem. That is an unfinished job description.
A range that spans eighty thousand dollars usually means two different jobs are being advertised as one, and the organization has decided to let the candidate pool determine which job it is hiring for. That approach is defensible as a strategy, but it should be a deliberate choice, and it should be stated. Splitting the posting into two levels with two ranges is nearly always the better answer, and it makes the interview loop easier to design because you know which bar you are measuring against. The same discipline applies to any criterion you cannot define: if it cannot be written down, it cannot be measured or defended.
What to do before you repost
Pull every open requisition and check for a range. Fix them together rather than individually, both because it is faster and because the California grace provision rewards demonstrating that all postings have been updated.
Confirm what your job boards and any external recruiters are publishing on your behalf, since their postings carry your obligation. Set the range to what you would genuinely pay a strong candidate, not a defensive ceiling you have no intention of reaching. Then tell your current team what you published and why, before they find it themselves.
None of this is complicated. It takes an afternoon, it removes a category of legal exposure, and it stops you from spending September interviewing people who were never going to say yes.
Related reading: California ADS Compliance for Employers Using AI Hiring Tools and Silence After the Final Interview.
Sources: California Labor Code section 432.3, as amended by Senate Bill 1162, effective January 1, 2023. California Civil Rights Department and Labor Commissioner guidance on pay scale disclosure. Pay transparency wage research published November 2025.