Colorado's pay transparency law increased wages across the board, study finds
Colorado's pay transparency law increased wages across the board, study finds
Colorado's pay transparency law increased wages across the board, study finds | Colorado Newsline
Among them was a stronger pay transparency law, aimed at helping to close persistent disparities in wages along gender and racial lines. Backed by groups that advocate for economic and social justice, including 9to5 Colorado and the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, Senate Bill 19-85, the Equal Pay For Equal Work Act, was passed on mostly party-line votes and was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in May 2019.
Democrats enacted the law, which required employers to list pay ranges for all job openings and to maintain detailed records of their pay rates, over the objections of a long list of business groups, who argued that the new burdens on employers would end up hurting the workers the bill was intended to help.
But six years later, there’s no evidence that those unintended negative consequences have come to pass in Colorado, a new working paper released this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research found. On the contrary, the study suggests positive “spillover” effects have led to across-the-board wage increases for Colorado workers.
Pay transparency was a game changer once I moved to a country that had it. If you never experienced it, you don't know how much better it makes a job search. Not having to go to a job interview (sometimes several) before finding out the minimum of what you will earn saves so much time. And it leads to better salaries.