SALARY* BEFORE SAILING : MASTER COMPREHENSION

 

National Women's Law Center : More than one-fourth of US labor force is now covered by salary transparency legislation, according to an estimate by the National Women's Law Center.

Norms are shifting nationwide : At indeed, a job search website, about 45 percent of all advertisement for work in the United States now carry a pay range disclosure, up from less than 20 percent before the pandemic.

Lawmakers often introduce pay transparency laws in an effort to help reduce gender and racial wage gaps.

Women working full time in the United States are paid about 84 percent as much as men, according to the Department of Labor, and Black, Hispanic and Native American workers earn 73 to 77 cents for every dollar earned by White workers. Requiring employers to list salary ranges helps demystify a job search.

'' They can rest assured that what they're getting is fair, and they can feel more confident about that choice,'' said Ellen Stein, director of the Starr Career Development Center at Baruch.

Last December, Student Yun Yati Naing began searching for the job she would begin after graduating from Baruch College in New York City.

It was one month after a law passed by the city went into effect requiring employers with four or more employees to post salary ranges on all new job advertisements.

'' All my friends were talking about it,'' Ms. Naing said. '' It really made a difference going into the work force as a fresh graduate. We had no idea what the wages of these entry-level jobs were.''

Thanks to the new disclosure requirements, Ms. Naing, who was interested in a career in finance, was able to filter out opportunities that paid less than $50,000, the minimum salary she hoped to earn.

She tracked job opportunities on an Excel spreadsheet, and after a flurry of interviews and offers, she accepted a job in financial services that advertised starting pay between $54,000 and $79,000.

Her new employer's offer came in at $60,000, and she negotiated a modest increase. She graduated in early June and has just started work.

More and more young students like Ms. Naing are entering job searches with a cleareyed view of how much money they can expect to earn, the result of a spate of new laws in the United States that require employers to list pay ranges on job advertisements.

Salary Transparency Legislation has been enacted in California, Washington State, Colorado and a handful of cities including New York, Illinois passed a wage transparency law in May.  

Illuminating Pay Discrepancies : For some workers, the disclosure law has revealed pay disparities where they work.

Kimberly Nguyen, a 25-year-old poet and a user-experience or UX, writer who writes consumer-facing text for digital products, was scrolling through LinkedIn in March when she found a listing for her own job.

She had recently been hired by the consulting agency Photon to work as a contractor for Citi-group on a team that included full-time employees and other contractors.

During the interview process, Ms. Nguyen said, she was told that the only way to secure a full-time job at Citi was to work as a contractor first, and that the company's goal was to eventually hire all contractors as full-time employees through a process called conversion.

She was told that she would be eligible for conversion after six months of contract work.

When the job posting for UX copywriting position at Citi popped up on her LinkedIn feed, Ms. Nguyen thought it might signal a permanent job opening for one of the contractors. The difference in the pay was substantial :

She was making $85,000, and the salary range on the job listing was $117, 200 to $175, 800.

'' If the salary were maybe a $10,000 to $15,000 difference, I would be like, OK, that makes sense,'' Ms. Nguyen said.

'' The contracting agency has to get their cut. Citi's paying them to pay me. But the gap is so big.''

Posting on Twitter about the situation, Ms.Nguyen wrote, '' My company just listed on LinkedIn a job posting for what I'm currently doing [so we're hiring another UX writer] and now thanks to salary transparency laws, I see that they intend to pay this person $32k-$90k more than they currently pay me, so I applied.''

The Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks author H. Claire Brown.