Colorado was the first state in the country to require employers to include salary or wage ranges in every job posting, and its pay transparency rules are the toughest around and come with enforcement teeth to back them up.
But nearly five years after the 2021 implementation of the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, nearly a fifth of Denver-area job postings reviewed still lack pay disclosures as required by state law, according to “The U.S. Pay Transparency Index 2025” from the compensation management platform beqom, spelled with a lowercase “b.”
The index looked at 13,303 job postings in the top cities of the dozen states that require pay transparency. Fewer than half were in full compliance with local requirements, while a quarter were partially compliant and a similar share were non-compliant, meaning they lacked pay information.
Of the 1,258 Denver-area job postings studied, 56% were fully compliant, a quarter were partially compliant and just under one in five or 19% were noncompliant. Denver had the third-best compliance rate after Fresno, Calif., and Seattle. But it also has had the longest time for employers to get familiar with the rules, nearly twice as long as California.
Colorado’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act covers all employers with at least one employee in the state, as well as all employers that advertise remote jobs to Colorado residents. It requires that job ads list total compensation, including all benefits, and requires that current employees be made aware of all job opportunities available. Applicants also can’t be asked about their salary history.
Maryland implemented an Equal Pay for Equal Work law three months before Colorado, but with salary ranges made available upon request, a much laxer standard. Colorado set a high bar and larger states like California, New York, Washington and Illinois have followed. About 60 million U.S. workers, including nearly 3 million in Colorado, live in states that require pay transparency and that number is expected to keep growing.
“While there’s clear momentum toward transparency, our data shows that many U.S. employers — in Denver and beyond — are still struggling to comply with pay transparency legislation,” Hayley Bakker, head of customer journey and digital enablement at beqom, said in an email.
Pay transparency still has a long way to go, the Swiss company said in its report. Compliance needs to be boosted and more protections enacted for low-wage workers, who stand to benefit the most from pay disclosures, but who also are much more likely to run into job ads lacking the required information.
Bakker listed three reasons why employers operating in the dozen states with pay transparency requirements don’t comply.
Smaller companies operating across multiple jurisdictions often struggle to stay up-to-speed on the complex patchwork of state and city-level regulations, resulting in inertia or inaction. Creating standardized rules could boost compliance and might encourage other states to adopt pay disclosure requirements.
Bakker said many companies still lack well-defined, up-to-date salary structures, especially those that historically provided managers with wide discretion on pay decisions. To post a pay range, companies need to have a well-defined range and stick to it, which eliminates the latitude to react based on how appealing a given candidate is or how desperate a good candidate might be to take the job.
“Before they can confidently publish ranges, they need to do the foundational work, including building consistent pay frameworks and ensuring internal equity,” Bakker said.
Another concern among noncompliers is what she described as a “very real fear of backlash.” If current staff find out that their wages are below the range being advertised, managers will have some difficult conversations, if not face an open revolt.
Also, some employers may feel publishing a range leaves them in a weaker bargaining position with potential hires.
“It also changes the negotiation dynamic with candidates, who are now walking in with more information and higher expectations. Employers don’t want to be the first to show their hand. It’s a wait-and-see how this unfolds from the perspective of regulatory enforcement and market pressure,” she said.
Smaller companies advertising lower-wage jobs with a higher representation of women, people of color and immigrants tend to have the highest rates of noncompliance, Bakker said.
Andrew Hudson, who has run a popular career connection site bearing his name since 1998, posts about 600 jobs a month. He said he rarely comes across a Colorado job posting that doesn’t include a salary range.
Rather, the problem he has run across is that some employers list such a wide salary spread, say $60,000 to $150,000, as to make the information essentially meaningless.
“The big complaint I get from job seekers is that the salary ranges are obnoxious,” Hudson said. He said some employers may be trying to skirt the law by providing a job seeker with “no realistic understanding of what the true range is.”
Most employers, however, have come to realize that posting accurate salary information offers a competitive advantage and generates better candidates, while job seekers love knowing from the get-go if a position fits their salary range, Hudson said.
“The rare employer that doesn’t have a salary range, I’ll reach out and remind them about the Colorado law and they usually edit the posting to include the salary. This happens most commonly with out-of-state companies,” he said.
Penalties in Colorado range from $500 to $10,000 per violation under the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (EPEW). The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Division of Labor Standards and Statistics (DLSS) handles enforcement and tracks complaints, of which there have been 2,228 filed since 2021, according to a dashboard maintained by the DLSS.
Those complaints, which can be filed online, generated 579 voluntary compliance letters sent out to employers. About three out of four times, the state either found no violations or the employer agreed to voluntarily cure any violations, avoiding a citation.
The state has launched 196 formal investigations into pay transparency. Employers who come into compliance typically avoid a citation or fine, although 38 employers under investigation reached a pre-citation settlement and paid $222,500 in fines.
Only two dozen employers were cited after a formal investigation. Of that group, 10 were fined a total of $841,500, an amount that was later lowered to $482,450 after settlements and waivers.
DaVita, the Denver-based provider of kidney dialysis care, paid the biggest fine so far at $298,000. Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin paid $79,500 and Twitter, now called X, paid $27,950.
Most of the citations came in the first two years of the new pay transparency requirements, although four came down this year.
A statement from the DLSS said that before the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act took effect, roughly one in five job postings in Colorado disclosed pay. By 2023, four in five were compliant, according to a study from Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
“The Division primarily looks into job postings that potentially violate EPEW requirements after we receive a tip or complaint and does some proactive auditing too,” the statement said, adding that the division hadn’t reviewed the scope of beqom’s findings.
But based on beqom’s research, noncompliance in Denver remains close to the rates that Hiring Lab found in 2023.