Colorado Leads in Wage Transparency Following Salary Disclosure Law

After implementing a law in 2019 that required job postings to disclose salary information, Colorado now boasts the highest rate of wage transparency in the United States. This result is unsurprising since it was the first state to enact such a law. Since then, other states have followed suit, and companies have taken notice, with some even developing tools to extract wage data from job postings. Aspen Tech Labs, an advertising-tech agency in Aspen specializing in recruitment, is among the companies leveraging the trend by offering a salary parsing tool that tracks salary data as part of its overall business, which involves monitoring over 6 million jobs from more than 120,000 sources in the United States.


By tracking salary data, Aspen Tech Labs can provide customers with insights into what their competitors pay and assess whether companies comply with the law. The company's analysis shows that the number of job openings in Colorado that include salary information increased from 35% in October to 49% in January, representing a 40% increase in just three months. As of last Friday, Colorado had the highest wage transparency rate in the country at 61%, which can be attributed to the state's Equal Pay law, which aims to achieve pay parity for women and underrepresented workers. According to Ryan Gifford, a data analyst for the company, the top four states with the highest wage transparency rates have enacted legislation, with Colorado being the first, followed by California, Washington, and New York. He notes that approximately 25% of job postings across the United States include salary information. This figure has increased by about 10% in the last six months, possibly due to pressure from states with legislation.

Colorado's law mandating salary disclosures for job postings was passed in 2019 and took effect in January 2021. Similar laws were enacted in New York City in November 2020 and California and Washington in January 2021, with New York expected to follow suit this year.

Despite a few out-of-state companies still violating the Colorado law by excluding Coloradans from applying to their remote jobs, most employers are complying, according to Aspen Tech Labs. As of last Friday, there were 3,980 remote job vacancies in Colorado, with 66% of them posting a salary. Across the United States, there were 215,616 remote job vacancies, with 47% sharing a salary. However, Ryan Gifford, a data analyst for the company, noted that it is difficult to quantify how many listings exclude Colorado applicants, as the wording used by each employer varies.

While it is too early to determine if the laws have achieved pay equity, Aspen Tech Labs' data suggests that overall pay rates may be dropping, as evidenced by a chart they have produced. Isabelle Woodrow, Aspen's product manager, acknowledged that the company's tool may not be extracting all the necessary salary information and that their efforts are a work in progress.

According to Isabelle Woodrow, Aspen's product manager, the decline in hourly wages could be attributed to the large volume of new job postings that include salary information. Since lower-wage jobs tend to make up the majority of listings, this could be dragging down the overall figures.

In Colorado, for instance, the largest share of job postings was for healthcare jobs, information technology jobs, food service, and retail jobs. Food and retail jobs typically cost around $20 per hour, while healthcare jobs pay less than $30 per hour. The lowest range of salaries for IT jobs was above $35 per hour, with the mid-range exceeding $50 per hour.

The availability of wage transparency data has provided job seekers a valuable tool for determining reasonable pay expectations. This data helps employers understand employment market trends and determine appropriate pay rates to attract talent when starting a new business or opening a new location, as noted by Gabby Schulte, Aspen's sales manager.