Law 2022/032 (the so-called Pay Transparency Law) amends Title 8 of New York City’s Administrative Code on Human Rights. Under the law, covered employers will be required to disclose proposed salaries in all job advertisements. The law’s key objective is to promote pay equality for certain segments of the labor force, such as women and minorities, who have historically received lower compensation. The law takes effect on May 15, 2022, 120 days following its enactment. Note that a bill introduced to the New York City Council on March 22, 2022, contains several significant proposed changes to the law, including deferral of the effective date to November 1, 2022.
Although preliminary guidance has been issued, more information is needed to clarify the scope of the law and the definition of a covered employer. As such, employers should continue to monitor developments and begin to assess the possible impact on both their recruitment and compensation practices.
The law is part of a growing national and global trend of governments promoting pay transparency as a means of supplementing existing equal pay laws. In many jurisdictions, legislation created to protect employees from enquiries into their salary history as prospective job candidates is evolving to focus on employers, obliging the publication or sharing of pay data previously considered confidential employer data. Exact requirements vary, but since 2018, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada and Washington state have all introduced such measures, and Massachusetts and New York state are currently considering similar legislation. In the European Union, a proposed directive on pay transparency is currently with parliament (see our July 2021 Global News Brief: European Union: Proposed directive on pay transparency for more details).
