Research · scan run October 19, 2026
More than a quarter of the job postings we checked had no pay range
We checked 10,473 public job postings from 191 companies for roles in US states and cities with pay transparency laws. 27.4% had no pay range we could detect. Most companies were mostly compliant; a small group posted almost nothing with a range.
The numbers
| Postings in scope | 10,473 |
| Companies with postings in scope | 191 |
| Postings flagged | 2,957 (28.2%) |
| Flagged for no detectable pay range | 2,870 (27.4%) |
| Flagged for both no range and no benefits description | 1,108 |
| Flagged only for no benefits description (benefits states) | 87 |
| Companies with at least one flagged posting | 119 of 191 (62%) |
| Median company flag rate | 12.5% |
| Companies with no flagged postings | 72 |
| Companies with every in-scope posting flagged | 23 |
The gap is between companies, not across them
The typical company in the sample was flagged on 12.5% of its postings, and 72 of the 191 had no flagged postings at all. At the other end, 23 companies had every in-scope posting flagged. That spread suggests the issue is usually process, such as one team or one posting template that leaves the range out, rather than employers ignoring the laws wholesale.
What we checked
Postings for roles in California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Vermont and Washington, plus remote-US postings. For Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington we also looked for a benefits description, which those states require. The list of states comes from the same law catalog our validator uses.
Method and limits
- The sample isn’t representative. We scanned the public applicant-tracking job boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and others) of a list of companies that leans heavily toward venture-backed tech. These are postings we checked, not a measure of all US employers.
- Detection is pattern matching, with no human review.A posting counts as having a range if it contains a dollar figure, a phrase like “salary range” or “pay range,” or a range like “120k–150k.” That misses ranges shown where a scanner can’t read them, such as an image or a separate pay page, and an unrelated dollar amount can count as a range. Both kinds of error happen.
- Employer-size thresholdswere applied where we knew a company’s size, which isn’t always accurate.
- Location comes from the posting’s text. Multi-location and remote postings count toward every covered state they mention.
- A flag isn’t a violation.Exemptions, cure periods (Virginia gives employers 15 business days, for example) and the facts of each role decide that. We publish aggregate figures only and don’t name companies.
Our June 2026 scanfound 73% of 917 postings non-compliant. The two figures aren’t comparable: June checked up to 20 postings from each of 127 companies, while this scan took every in-scope posting from a larger, different set of companies, which gives large employers with many postings more weight. Don’t read the difference as a trend.
346 more job boards couldn’t be loaded during the scan, mostly because they had moved, and they aren’t counted.
Check your own postings
The validator checks one posting against every applicable law, free. The board scanner checks five postings from your own job board without an account. For what a compliant range looks like, see what counts as a salary range and the state-by-state table.
Citing this? Link to this page and describe the figures as “postings PayTransparency checked in October 2026.” This page isn’t legal advice.