More states are requiring companies to include salary ranges in job postings

California just became the latest state to require companies to include salary ranges in job postings. A few other states, including Colorado and Connecticut, already have similar laws in place. Washington State will soon. And so will New York City.

Pay transparency laws affect how prospective candidates negotiate. Knowing the salary range before you get a job offer can make it easier to figure out where to start with negotiations.

“And take some of the guesswork out of the process,” said Laura Kray at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, who also said that can be particularly helpful for women and people of color. “It is an equalizer in the sense of providing access to information that they may not otherwise be able to get through word of mouth alone.”

Kray said that should help reduce gender and racial pay gaps.

It can also help people decide whether it’s even worth applying to a job in the first place, said Nancy Romanyshyn at the workforce analytics platform Syndio.

“It’s been fascinating to me as somebody who has designed compensation programs for 30 years now, to see how much more information candidates have at their fingertips.”

For people who do apply and get an offer in states that require employers to share salary ranges upfront, “it puts them in a really great position, because they are just able to really understand what jobs are worth, what are the different markets,” Romanyshyn said.

As more states and cities have started requiring pay transparency, Romanyshyn said it’s becoming more common for companies to post salary ranges even if they’re not in a state where they have to.

Because, increasingly, job seekers are expecting transparency.