New Publication: Pay and Benefits Transparency in New Jersey Employment

Agard Research Associates is pleased to share a new policy report by Alyssa I. Agard, titled Pay and Benefits Transparency in New Jersey Employment: A Policy Analysis of the New Jersey Pay and Benefits Transparency Act (P.L. 2024, c. 91), Its Proposed Implementing Regulations, the Federal Legal Landscape, and Measured Effects of Pay Transparency Policy. The full report is paired with a simplified Report in Brief, available in English and Spanish, along with presentations that show at a glance what a compliant New Jersey job posting must now contain and what a reader can do when one falls short.

What the report asks

The report is organized around four questions a New Jersey reader is most likely to bring to the subject: (1) what the Pay and Benefits Transparency Act actually requires, provision by provision, and which employers it covers, (2) which requirements are binding law today and which sit only in a regulatory proposal, (3) how the state law fits alongside federal employment law, which contains no posting mandate of its own, and (4) what has been measured, rather than predicted, about the effects of transparency policies on wages and wage gaps. The analysis rests on the statute and the notice of proposal read in the original rather than through summaries, on the Department of Labor and Workforce Development's own releases and guidance, on the United States Code, and on named federal statistical agencies and peer-reviewed studies for every empirical claim.

The law is in force; the strictest rules are only a proposal

The central finding is a matter of legal status. A posting for a New Jersey job has, since June 1, 2025, generally been required to state the pay, as one figure or a range, and to describe the actual benefits, whether the opening is advertised publicly or only within a company, and employers must make reasonable efforts to tell current employees about promotional openings. Coverage is broad, reaching public and private employers alike once their total workforce, counted everywhere they operate, includes 10 or more people and they do business, employ anyone, or take applications in the state. The most demanding measures attributed to the law in public discussion are not law at all. A proposal that would keep the top of a posted pay range within 60 percent of the bottom, ban open-ended ranges, and spell out what a real benefits description contains was published on September 15, 2025 and remained unadopted, and non-binding, as of July 14, 2026. No federal statute puts pay in job postings, and the bills that would remain in committee, so New Jersey's law occupies ground Congress has so far left to the states. Jersey City's separate 2022 ordinance, which reaches employers with as few as five workers and demands both a minimum and a maximum, operates alongside the state law. Enforcement so far has corrected rather than punished: in its first initiative, announced March 18, 2026, the Department worked with 42 large employers, among them nationally recognized companies and public school districts, to fix faulty postings, and waived every available penalty in light of their cooperation.

Who posted pay serves, and what the numbers show

To connect the statute to the people it touches, the report works from the measured record rather than from prediction. Census Bureau figures for 2024 put women who worked full time, year round at 81 cents for every dollar men received, with the gap growing for the second straight year, and that the shortfall was steeper for Black women, at 65 cents against each dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. New Jersey's own ratio stood at 78 percent in the most recent state figures, a wider gap than the nation's. Earlier transparency policies, studied with strong research designs, narrowed the gender gap in affected Danish private firms by about 13 percent and cut faculty gaps at Canadian universities by 20 to 30 percent. The market has moved as well: by May 2025, 59 percent of United States postings on Indeed displayed pay, roughly triple the share in early 2020, and listings that include pay attract 3.8 times the applications of listings that do not. The report gives particular attention to the readers posted pay serves most, among them workers moving between industries, workers who lack professional networks, and workers hunting for a job in a second language, and it explains the remedy in plain terms: no one can sue under this law, but a complaint to the Department is free, requires no lawyer, is open to workers regardless of immigration status, and may be filed with help from a union or community organization.

Both sides, on equal terms

Consistent with ARA's nonpartisan mandate, the report presents the case for and against on equal footing. Supporters, including the law's sponsors and the Department, hold that posted pay lets applicants judge a job before applying, helps current employees see whether their own pay measures up, and pushes against the gaps documented above. Employer organizations largely accepted disclosure itself; their stated concerns run to the proposed additions, chiefly that a fixed cap on range width fits some occupations and pay structures poorly and that liability rules for outside job boards must stay practical for small businesses. The research record offers a caution to each side: transparency policies narrowed measured pay gaps wherever they have been studied, and one influential study also found average wages about 2 percent lower under one class of policies, because pay that everyone can see changes how employers negotiate. The report states both sets of facts and lets readers weigh them.

Why this matters

This research reflects Agard Research Associates' commitment to rigorous, accessible, and strictly nonpartisan scholarship on the institutions that shape American working life. By separating what is enacted from what is merely proposed, and by pairing the law's stated purposes with the evidence of what transparency policies have actually done, the publication gives New Jersey's workers, employers, and the organizations that serve them a clear account they can rely on and act on the next time they read, or write, a job posting.

Read report