C3 Vantage Points

Many states have enacted pay transparency laws intended to enhance the visibility of compensation practices to job candidates and current employees. One of the purposes, if not the primary one, is to create pay equity between disadvantaged groups and others by making information about pay programs widely accessible. Indeed, where transparency is practiced, the differences in salaries between groups decline.

Not all organizations, however, are proponents of pay transparency. These organizations argue that while these laws are directed toward a particular policy outcome of pay equality,