Over the past year, a growing number of U.S. states and cities have introduced laws aimed at forcing companies to be more transparent about how they pay their workers.
The most high-profile moves recently came in two major job markets, California and New York, which signed pay transparency legislation requiring employers to publish salary ranges in job ads by the end of 2022.
According to experts, the legislation aims to eliminate pay gaps, especially around gender and race, by preventing both unconscious bias and blatant discrimination that can skew pay toward certain groups.
Employer discrimination contributes to some of the pay gap, but studies also show that women and minority workers, for example, tend to demand lower wages than white men. Transparent pay scales can help address these issues, experts say.