Employers looking to hire in Washington state will soon have to start disclosing a pay range in job descriptions, under a new law.
Gov. Jay Inslee signed Senate Bill 5761 into law on Wednesday. Once the law goes into effect on Jan. 1, companies with 15 or more employees will be required to disclose the salary range and a “general description” of the benefits and other compensation tied to a role.
Washington is not the first state to pass such a bill. Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act went into effect last year. Since then, that law has resulted in some employers (including Airbnb, according to the Denver Post) barring Colorado-based workers from applying to jobs in an apparent effort to circumvent the requirement to disclose pay ranges.
The Washington bill may be harder to circumvent, given the state’s mass of tech workers, according to Cher Scarlett, an engineer who testified in favor of Washington’s bill.
“Colorado has faced exclusion from software jobs because of this law, but good luck doing the same for coveted Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Apple engineers,” Scarlett tweeted on Friday. “California and New York, I’m looking at you to keep this going to ensure Coloradans stop losing out unfairly on jobs.”