California Salary Transparency Requirements and Penalties

California’s salary transparency law requires employers with 15 or more workers to publish a pay range in every job posting, lets any California employee ask for the pay scale of their current role regardless of company size, and bans employers from asking job applicants about their past pay. The core rules sit in Labor Code Section 432.3, as amended by Senate Bill 1162, which took effect January 1, 2023.¹

What Must Appear in a Job Posting

Any employer with 15 or more employees has to include a pay scale in every job listing. That applies to postings the company publishes directly and to any listing a third-party recruiter or job board puts up on its behalf.¹ A company using a staffing agency has to hand the pay scale over to the agency so it ends up in the ad.

The statute defines pay scale as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position.¹ A range like “$50,000 to $500,000” would not meet that standard, because no employer actually expects to pay that whole spread for one role. The number you see should be the real range the hiring manager is working with.

Remote postings count too. The Labor Commissioner has interpreted the rule to cover any position that could be filled by someone working in California, which pulls in out-of-state companies hiring remote workers.²

Smaller companies, those with fewer than 15 employees, don’t have to put a range in the ad. They do have to give an applicant the pay scale on reasonable request after a first interview.

Your Right to the Pay Range for Your Own Job

If you work in California, you can ask your employer for the pay scale that applies to your current position, and the employer has to give it to you. This right has no headcount threshold. A five-person startup is subject to the same obligation as a Fortune 500 company.¹

The right stops at your own role. You can’t demand the range for a coworker’s position or for a job in another department. But seeing where your salary sits inside your position’s established range is useful information for a raise conversation or for spotting a pay equity problem.

The Ban on Salary History Questions

A California employer cannot ask about your prior compensation or benefits, whether through the interview itself, a recruiter, or a background check vendor. The employer also cannot rely on your pay history to decide whether to make an offer or how much to offer.¹

There are narrow exceptions. If you volunteer your past pay without any prompting, the employer may consider it in setting your salary. An interviewer can also ask what you expect to earn in the role you’re applying for. And salary information that’s already public under open-records laws isn’t covered. So “What are you hoping to earn in this role?” is fair game. “What did your last job pay?” is not.

Protection If You Talk About Pay

Labor Code Section 232 bars employers from requiring you to keep your wages secret, from making you sign anything that would stop you from disclosing your pay, and from punishing you for sharing what you earn.³

California’s Equal Pay Act adds another layer. An employer cannot fire or discipline you for disclosing your own wages, for asking a coworker what they earn, or for helping someone else enforce equal pay rights. If an employer takes an adverse action against you within 90 days of any of those activities, the law presumes the action was retaliatory, and the employer has to prove it wasn’t. A retaliation complaint under this provision has to be filed with the Labor Commissioner within one year of the adverse action.⁴

Filing a Complaint and What Employers Face

If an employer leaves the pay range off a posting, refuses your request for a pay scale, or asks about salary history, you can file a written complaint with the Labor Commissioner. You have one year from the date you learned about the violation.¹

Penalties for posting violations run from $100 to $10,000 per violation. A first-time offender gets a break: if the employer updates all open job listings to include pay scales, the Labor Commissioner will not assess a fine. That leniency disappears after the first violation, and repeat failures carry mandatory penalties.¹

Pay Data Reporting for Larger Employers

Separate from the posting and disclosure rules, private employers with 100 or more employees on payroll must file an annual pay data report with the California Civil Rights Department under Government Code Section 12999. A second report is required from employers that use 100 or more workers through labor contractors.⁵ The report breaks down the workforce by job category, race, ethnicity, and sex, and includes median and mean hourly rates along with federal pay-band counts.

Reports are due by the second Wednesday of May each year for the prior calendar year. The deadline for the 2025 reporting year is May 13, 2026.⁶ A court can impose fines of up to $100 per employee for a first failure to file and up to $200 per employee for each subsequent missed report.⁵ This filing is an employer obligation; individual workers don’t file anything under this section.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 432.3 – Contracts and Applications for Employment
2
Department of Industrial Relations. California Equal Pay Act
3
California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 232
4
California Legislative Information. California Code LAB 1197.5 – Equal Pay
5
California Legislative Information. California Code GOV 12999 – Pay Data Reporting
6
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting