A California law requiring nearly all employers hiring in the state to list salary ranges in job postings will go into effect next year, and New York’s governor is expected to sign similar legislation soon. Colorado began requiring pay transparency in 2021. National job boards including Indeed.com say more postings are spelling out salary ranges overall, regardless of where the jobs are located.

Job seekers like pay transparency because the salary data allows them to be more targeted in their search, according to compensation specialists and researchers. Posted pay ranges can also help people assess whether their own compensation is at market rate. Many managers say public salary information saves them time with candidates because there is a better chance that the company and the worker are on the same page when it comes to pay.

“The good thing about pay-range transparency laws is that it sets an absolute floor for candidates, so people won’t be totally in the dark about a company’s pay practices,” said David Buckmaster, who led teams that designed compensation structures at Nike Inc. and Starbucks Corp., and wrote the book “Fair Pay.”

Candidates should know that a lot of companies only post their pay-range minimums to meet the compliance requirements, which means salaries might be more negotiable than the posted data suggests in some cases, Mr. Buckmaster said.

Paris Clarke, 24, works in customer service and is currently looking for a new role. She said she is less likely to apply for a position if the posting doesn’t include a pay range. A range helps her weed out salaries she considers insufficient for a job’s duties or her experience level. Ms. Clarke, who lives in Citrus Heights, Calif., said she is seeking $18 to $22 an hour.

Pay ranges are designed to be wide. Some salary ranges can span tens of thousands of dollars to account for potential hires with a variety of education and experience levels, Mr. Buckmaster said. Where a person falls in a range depends on how a company values a person’s skill set and the competition for the job, according to compensation specialists and human-resource executives.

Government efforts to compel companies to publish pay ranges are intended to boost pay equity and address gender and racial wage gaps by ensuring people doing the same jobs earn similar pay. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found 25% of employed women said they had earned less than a man who was doing the same job; 5% of men said they had earned less than a woman doing the same job. A 2019 study of 1.8 million salary responses by Payscale, a compensation-software and data provider, found that Black men earned 98 cents for every dollar earned by white men with the same job and qualifications.

Whether these laws will help close the gaps remains unclear, because disparities can exist within wide salary ranges, human-resource officers and compensation coaches said.

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