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posted by janrinok on Monday October 24 2022, @07:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-enough-for-me dept.

Coming soon to a job near you: Knowing what it pays:

You wouldn't rent an apartment or even buy a pair of jeans online without knowing the price. Soon, many Americans won't search for a job without knowing what it pays, either.

A series of local and state laws, both newly adopted and soon to be in effect, will force companies to divulge what a job pays when posting an open position. Besides being common sense, the intent of these laws is to shrink the persistent wage gap that divides white men from women and people of color. Lowering the pay gap would be an important step forward for equality in the US, affecting everything from Americans' quality of life to how they see themselves. But while pay transparency is a much-needed improvement, a lot more is needed to truly create balance for all Americans.

In the US, women and people of color get paid less than white men, regardless of job or experience. Pay gaps often begin at the start of careers, then compound over a lifetime as women and people of color are less likely to get raises. A variety of other factors contribute to the gap as well, like the motherhood penalty, wherein women who take time off paid work to care for kids are paid nearly 40 percent less than those who don't. There's occupational segregation, in which jobs that are filled predominantly by women or people of color, like home health aides or food service workers, are paid less. (The pay and prestige of computer science, for example, rose only as more men entered the field.) Women and people of color are also seriously underrepresented in leadership positions, which are paid the most. In sum, that means the median hourly wage for women is 86 cents per hour for every dollar a man makes. Black women make 68 cents. There's been little progress on closing the pay gap in the last three decades.

[...] "Transparency is one of the leading tools we've identified for closing the wage gap," Andrea Johnson, director of state policy at the National Women's Law Center, told Recode. "It is absolutely crucial for both increasing worker power and employer accountability."


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Monday October 24 2022, @08:43PM (5 children)

    by Barenflimski (6836) on Monday October 24 2022, @08:43PM (#1278202)

    In Colorado this is the law. All jobs now have a huge range of what you might get paid. It all depends on your prior skills, not on the job. Married, babies, family, school, friends in HR, what degree and from where you may have gotten it from all affect your final base pay.

    It is the same old club, but instead of asking the HR or recruiters, you find out this information from the job ad, if there ever was one. It hasn't changed a thing. Every job has a 50k -> 100k range.

    I don't think that folks that write these articles have any idea how this actually works. There is an algorithm taught in schools around the country, and pushed by the likes of PwC (Price Waterhouse Coopers) that almost every financial person copies/pastes and slightly edits before calling that the new "company wage policy."

    This type of article only makes people think that there is actually some route for them to get significantly more pay and that there is some system that is in play to reduce that.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 24 2022, @09:00PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday October 24 2022, @09:00PM (#1278210)

    > Every job has a 50k -> 100k range.

    That speeds things up considerably. If $150K isn't even in the range, don't waste my time.

    --
    Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 24 2022, @09:50PM (1 child)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Monday October 24 2022, @09:50PM (#1278233)

      If $150K isn't even in the range, don't waste my time.

      Ah. that's too bad. I was about to propose you a job in the $151K - $200K range, but since you're not interested...

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 24 2022, @11:47PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday October 24 2022, @11:47PM (#1278248)

        The artifacts of uneditable content and little care for getting it right the first time are many...

        --
        Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
    • (Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Monday October 24 2022, @10:01PM

      by Barenflimski (6836) on Monday October 24 2022, @10:01PM (#1278234)

      Yea, I could have worded that better.

  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by SomeRandomGeek on Monday October 24 2022, @09:19PM

    by SomeRandomGeek (856) on Monday October 24 2022, @09:19PM (#1278222)

    I, for one, find this law completely absurd. Professional baseball players make a good example. Imagine applying this law to major league baseball. Wanted: Baseball player. Salary range ($570k - $43.3m.) What's that? Not all baseball players have the same job? Ok, let's be more specific about the job categories. It doesn't help much. Wanted: Relief Pitcher. Salary range($570k - $16m) Wanted: Catcher. Salary range($570k - $23.8m)
    The law presumes that two people with the same job description are equally good at their job and provide the same value to their employer. But this is simply not true. Or maybe the law presumes that the company can't tell the difference between low performing and high performing employees. But this is also not true. Or at least not universally true. There are definitely jobs where performance matters and performance varies. And trying to force employers to ignore that is absurd.