California Senate Bill 1162: Pay Scale, Postings, and Data Reports

California SB 1162 is the state’s pay transparency law. Since January 1, 2023, it has required most employers to publish salary ranges in job postings, give current employees and applicants their position’s pay scale on request, keep wage history records, and—for employers with 100 or more workers—file an annual pay data report with the California Civil Rights Department. Penalties run from $100 to $10,000 per violation, and employees can enforce the law through the Labor Commissioner or in court.¹

Salary Ranges in Job Postings

Every California employer with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in every job posting, whether the listing is internal or external.¹ That covers the company website, third-party job boards, recruiting platforms, and any other channel used to advertise the opening. When a staffing agency or outside recruiter does the posting, the employer still has to supply the pay scale, and the third party has to publish it.²

“Pay scale” means the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position.³ A range like “$75,000–$95,000 annually” or “$28–$36 per hour” satisfies the requirement. A single figure is only acceptable if the employer genuinely expects to pay that amount and nothing else. The range has to reflect what the employer actually plans to pay. A good faith estimate is the standard the Labor Commissioner applies, and a sprawling range like “$30,000–$300,000” posted for a mid-level role will be treated as noncompliant.

Pay Scale on Request

Every employer, regardless of size, must give current employees the pay scale for their position when they ask for it.¹ There is no cap on how often an employee can ask, and the employer cannot demand a reason.

Smaller employers—those under the 15-employee threshold for job-posting disclosure—aren’t fully exempt either. They still have to provide the pay scale to any applicant who makes a reasonable request.¹

Wage History Records

Every California employer must keep records of each employee’s job title and wage rate history for the full duration of employment plus three years after the person leaves.¹ The Labor Commissioner can inspect these records and uses them to identify patterns of wage discrimination.

Letting the records lapse creates a serious litigation risk. If an employee files a pay equity claim and the required records are missing, the law creates a rebuttable presumption in the employee’s favor.² The burden shifts to the employer to disprove the claim without the evidence that would normally carry the defense.

Annual Pay Data Report for Employers With 100 or More Workers

Employers with 100 or more employees have to file a pay data report every year with the California Civil Rights Department.⁴ It is due by the second Wednesday of May each year and covers the prior calendar year.

The report breaks the workforce down across ten standard job categories (executives, managers, professionals, technicians, sales workers, administrative support, craft workers, operatives, laborers, and service workers) and includes:

Headcount by race, ethnicity, and sex in each job category.
The number of employees in each demographic group whose W-2 earnings fall within Bureau of Labor Statistics pay bands.
The median and mean hourly rate for each combination of job category, race, ethnicity, and sex.
Total hours worked by each employee counted in each pay band during the reporting year.

To build the report, employers pick a single pay period between October 1 and December 31 of the reporting year, take a workforce “snapshot,” and then calculate full-year W-2 earnings for every employee captured in that snapshot.⁴

A Separate Report for Contractor-Supplied Workers

A private employer that hired 100 or more workers through labor contractors during the prior year must file a second pay data report covering those contractor-supplied workers.⁴ That report has to disclose the names of all labor contractors used, and the contractors are legally obligated to hand over the pay data the client employer needs to complete it. The reporting duty sits with the client, not the staffing agency.

What Happens If the Report Isn’t Filed

If the CRD doesn’t receive the report, it can get a court order compelling compliance and recover its costs. A court can also impose civil penalties of $100 per employee for a first failure to file and $200 per employee for each subsequent failure.³ For a workforce of several hundred, those per-head numbers escalate quickly.

Penalties for Job Posting and Pay Scale Violations

Failing to include a salary range in a posting, refusing to provide pay scale information on request, or neglecting the record-keeping duty carries civil penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation.¹ The Labor Commissioner sets the amount based on the totality of the circumstances, including whether the employer has been cited before. Each noncompliant posting can be treated as a separate violation.

There is one break for first-time offenders of the job-posting rule. On a first violation, no penalty will be assessed if the employer can show that all open job postings have been updated to include pay scales.² That cure window closes after the first offense, and later violations are where penalties climb toward the $10,000 ceiling.

How Employees and Applicants Enforce the Law

An aggrieved employee or applicant has two routes. One is a written complaint to the Labor Commissioner, which must be filed within one year of learning about the violation.¹ The Commissioner is required to investigate promptly and can order civil penalties.

The other is a direct civil lawsuit for injunctive relief and any other remedy the court finds appropriate.² That private right of action means employers face exposure from employees and applicants themselves, not only regulators.

Remote Jobs and Out-of-State Employers

SB 1162’s job-posting rule applies to any position that could be filled by someone working in California, including fully remote roles. A company headquartered in another state that posts a remote opening a Californian could apply for still has to include the salary range.

For employers hiring across multiple states with their own pay transparency laws, defaulting to California’s standards in every posting is a practical way to stay compliant everywhere, because California’s requirements are among the strictest. The headcount thresholds matter too: 15 employees triggers the job-posting duty, and 100 triggers the annual pay data report, so track workforce size as it changes.

1
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 432.3
2
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code Section 432.3
3
California Legislative Information. California State Senate Bill 1162 – Employment: Salaries and Wages
4
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 12999