Women Employed Celebrates Start of Pay Transparency Law

CHICAGO – Women Employed, which has been creating fundamental, systemic change for working women for over 50 years, is celebrating the start of Illinois’s groundbreaking salary transparency law that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2025. The law amends the Illinois Equal Pay Act, and continues the state’s commitment to ensuring equal pay for all workers.

The new law requires businesses with 15 or more employees to publicly post the wage or salary range and information about the benefits and other compensation offered for a job, promotion, transfer or other employment opportunity starting in January 2025. It also requires employers to provide employees their current wage or salary range along with a general description of benefits and other compensation upon that employee’s hiring, promotion, or transfer, upon the employee’s request.

“We are grateful to Rep. Mary Beth Canty and former Sen. Pacione-Zayas for their championship and Gov. Pritzker for signing into law this amendment to ensure we continue to advance pay equity across our state,” said Sharmili Majmudar, Executive Vice President of Policy, Programs, and Research for Women Employed. “In just a few weeks, Illinois will advance our leadership in closing the racial and gender pay gap. This simple yet powerful change will empower workers with information, as well as improve hiring and build trust in employers.”

Notably, 2024 was the first year that saw the gender wage gap in the U.S. widen in 20 years. In Illinois, closing the gender wage gap would translate into a 16 percent increase in women’s earnings, totaling $20.5 billion, a huge boost for the state’s economy. It also means 1.1 million children would benefit from equal pay, potentially reducing the poverty rate for children with working mothers by 43 percent.

Pay range and benefits information helps prospective employees accurately assess job opportunities and negotiate in an informed manner. Disclosing the salary or salary range for a position helps keep employers accountable, levels the negotiating playing field, and gives applicants, employees, and enforcement agencies information to identify and remedy any unjustified pay disparities.

Pay range transparency also helps businesses of all sizes more efficiently and effectively find and match candidates who are interested and would take a position. This helps save costs and gives small businesses without an HR team an edge, which is why many small businesses already include pay ranges in job announcements. An Adobe Future Workforce Study found that an overwhelming majority of recent and upcoming college graduates want to know how much a role will pay before even applying. A study from the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 70 percent of organizations say that including pay ranges in job postings has led to more people applying, and nearly two-thirds (66 percent) say that listing pay ranges on job postings has increased the quality of applicants they’re seeing.

Recently, Women Employed was the lead partner for the Illinois FARE Grant project, spearheaded by the Illinois Department of Labor and funded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau, which sought to ensure that women across the state, especially those in low-paid jobs, are aware of their equal pay rights, remedies, and resources. The effort reached millions of women across the state, helping them to better understand and advocate for their workplace rights.

In addition to advocating for the salary transparency law, Women Employed has advocated for all of the equal pay laws currently on the books in Illinois, including the No Salary History bill that passed in 2019. The law bans employers (and those working on behalf of employers) from asking job applicants their current or prior salaries, wages, benefits, and other compensation – a practice that perpetuates racial and gender wage gaps.

Illinois joins many states and localities with laws that require pay ranges be included in job postings, including Colorado, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, California, as well as Cincinnati and New York City.

More information on Illinois’s salary transparency law can be found here.

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About Women Employed
Since 1973, Women Employed (WE) has been opening doors, breaking barriers, and expanding opportunities for women. Our mission is to increase the economic status of women and remove barriers to economic equity, and we do that by shaping policy change, expanding access to educational opportunities, and advocating for fair and inclusive workplaces so that all women, families, and communities can thrive. For more information, visit https://womenemployed.org, or follow Women Employed on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.