## Massachusetts Just Joined the Pay Transparency States — Here's What Changed
On October 29, 2025, Massachusetts became the latest state to require employers to disclose salary ranges in job postings. The law — part of the Massachusetts Pay Transparency Act signed by Governor Healey in July 2024 — applies to any employer with **25 or more employees** whose primary place of work was in Massachusetts during the prior calendar year.
If you run a Massachusetts business and posted any jobs since Halloween 2025 without including a pay range, you're already out of compliance.
The good news: Massachusetts built in a generous grace period. Until October 29, 2027, the Attorney General's office will issue a notice to cure before issuing any fine. Employers get **two business days** to correct a non-compliant posting before penalties apply. After October 2027, the gloves come off — fines run from $500 to $25,000 per violation.
The law is live. The cure window is open now. The time to get your templates right is before the AG starts auditing.
Who Is Covered
The 25-employee threshold is lower than many Massachusetts employers assume. The count includes **all employees** — full-time, part-time, and seasonal workers — whose primary place of work is in Massachusetts during the prior calendar year. It does not matter where your headquarters is. A company headquartered in California with a Boston office and 26 Massachusetts employees is a covered employer under Massachusetts law.
Third-party recruiting firms and staffing agencies are also covered if they post jobs on behalf of a covered Massachusetts employer. If your recruiter posts a job for your company without a pay range, that's your compliance problem, not theirs.
What's notably excluded: domestic employers (household staff), the federal government, and employers with fewer than 25 Massachusetts employees. A company with 24 Massachusetts employees and 400 employees elsewhere is not yet a covered employer — but verify this calculation annually, because employee counts change.
The Core Requirement: Pay Ranges in Every Job Posting
Covered employers must include a **pay range** in every job posting, both internal and external. The obligation extends to:
- External postings on your website, LinkedIn, Indeed, and any third-party job board
- Internal postings for open positions, promotions, or transfers
- Any posting distributed through a third-party recruiter acting on your behalf
The law defines a pay range as "the annual salary range or hourly wage range that the employer reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for such a position at that time." The operative phrase is "reasonably and in good faith." The Massachusetts AG has made clear this means a realistic range — not a placeholder range like $40,000–$200,000 designed to preserve negotiating room.
What makes a range compliant: - Based on an applicable pay scale the company actually uses - Based on the budgeted compensation for the role - Based on the range paid to current employees in the same or comparable position - Reflects what you genuinely expect to offer, not what you'd offer in a best-case or worst-case scenario
If your range is so broad it provides no useful information to applicants, it doesn't meet the good-faith standard.
Three Additional Disclosure Obligations
The Massachusetts law goes further than just job postings. Covered employers must also disclose pay ranges in three additional situations:
**1. Any applicant who requests it.** If an applicant asks for the pay range for a position they applied for — whether or not the posting includes it — you must provide it. There's no deadline between the request and the disclosure, but the AG's guidance strongly implies prompt compliance.
**2. Any employee offered a promotion or transfer.** When you offer an existing employee a new role, the pay range for that role must be disclosed as part of the offer — before the employee accepts.
**3. Any current employee who requests their own position's pay range.** If an employee asks what the pay range is for the job they currently hold, you must tell them. This applies regardless of what you're currently paying that employee.
These three additional disclosure obligations don't require a job posting to trigger them. They arise from the conversation. Managers who routinely discuss promotions or field compensation questions without knowing these rules are creating compliance gaps at the conversation level.
How Massachusetts Enforces Pay Transparency — and Why the Cure Period Matters
Massachusetts took a notably employer-friendly enforcement approach: there is **no private right of action** under the pay transparency law. Employees and applicants cannot sue you directly for a non-compliant job posting — all enforcement runs through the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. Note that retaliating against an employee who exercises rights under this law (such as requesting their pay range) may create separate liability under existing Massachusetts employment anti-discrimination statutes.
The AG's enforcement process works like this:
1. A complaint is filed (or the AG's office discovers a non-compliant posting on its own) 2. The AG issues a Notice to Cure 3. The employer has **two business days** to correct the violation 4. If corrected in time: no fine, no penalty, no public record 5. If not corrected, or if violations are repeated: fines from $500 to $25,000 per violation
This two-business-day cure window is available to employers until October 29, 2027 — two years after the law took effect. After that date, the AG retains discretion to issue fines without a cure opportunity for repeat or willful violators.
Practically speaking, this means any Massachusetts employer who hasn't updated job posting templates yet still has time to fix the problem before a fine lands. The risk right now is not a fine — it's being caught mid-violation when you don't have a process in place to respond within 48 hours.
Pay Equity Reporting for Large Employers
The Massachusetts Pay Transparency Act also includes a pay equity reporting requirement for large employers. Any employer required to file **federal EEO-1, EEO-3, EEO-4, or EEO-5 reports** must also submit wage data to the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office.
The report must include: - Median and mean earnings broken down by race, ethnicity, and sex - Organized by the same EEO job categories used in federal reporting
The first filings are due in early 2026; check the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office for the current filing deadline. If your company hasn't yet filed, you're exposed to AG enforcement in addition to any job posting violations.
This reporting obligation is separate from the job posting pay range requirement and doesn't affect employers below the EEO reporting thresholds. But if your company files a federal EEO-1 (typically required for employers with 100+ employees), you also owe Massachusetts a wage data report.
Remote Job Postings: When Does Massachusetts Law Apply?
The Massachusetts law applies to a position based in Massachusetts — meaning the employee will primarily perform work in Massachusetts. For remote roles, the critical question is where the employee will physically work, not where the employer is headquartered.
Apply Massachusetts pay transparency rules when the position has a Massachusetts nexus — for example, when you're specifically recruiting Massachusetts-based applicants, or when the role is functionally anchored to your Massachusetts office even if the employee will work remotely. The law does not provide explicit remote-work guidance, but the AG's interpretation tracks the nature of the position rather than the employee's physical keyboard location.
For positions that are truly nationwide remote with no Massachusetts nexus, Massachusetts law is less clearly triggered. But if you're a Massachusetts employer posting a remote role open to anyone, the conservative compliance position is to include the pay range — it also likely satisfies Colorado, New York, and other states that require salary ranges for remote postings open to their residents.
Compliance Checklist for Massachusetts Employers
Before you post your next job, run through this checklist:
**Job posting templates:** - [ ] Every external job posting includes a pay range - [ ] Every internal job posting (promotions, transfers) includes a pay range - [ ] The range is specific enough to be a "good faith estimate" — not a placeholder - [ ] Third-party recruiters have been briefed on the requirement
**Disclosure procedures:** - [ ] HR and hiring managers know to provide pay ranges to applicants who request them - [ ] Offer letters for promotions and transfers include the pay range for the new role - [ ] Employees who request their own position's pay range are being handled promptly
**Pay equity reporting (if applicable):** - [ ] If you file federal EEO-1, you've submitted (or are preparing) your Massachusetts wage data report
**Salary history:** - [ ] Hiring managers and recruiters are not asking for salary history before a conditional offer is extended (required under M.G.L. c. 149 §105A, separate from the Pay Transparency Act)
What Comes After 2027
The two-business-day cure period for Massachusetts expires October 29, 2027. After that date, the AG's office has discretion to impose fines without offering a cure window. The $500-to-$25,000 penalty range — assessed per violation — means a single non-compliant hiring cycle with multiple job postings can generate significant exposure.
Companies that build compliant templates now will have nothing to do in 2027 except keep running them. Companies that wait will face a harder transition under greater enforcement risk.
Tracking Massachusetts and 17+ Other States
Massachusetts is one of 18 jurisdictions — including Washington D.C. — now requiring pay range disclosure. The requirements differ across states in meaningful ways: California requires pay ranges in postings; New Jersey requires disclosure on request; Oregon requires a written pay disclosure at hire; Vermont extends the requirement to internal promotions.
If you're posting remote roles or hiring across state lines, the matrix of applicable rules grows fast. Regulatr's [pay transparency tracker](/pay-transparency) tracks active requirements across every state with a law, flags multi-state exposure for remote job postings, and sends alerts when new requirements take effect. One non-compliant job posting in New York or California costs more than years of monitoring fees.