Delaware Pay Transparency Law: What Employers Must Do Before September 2027

Delaware just became the next state to put a salary range in every job posting. On September 26, 2025, Governor Matthew Meyer signed House Bill 105 into law, and it takes effect two years later — September 26, 2027. If you employ people in Delaware, that date is closer than it feels. Two years disappears fast when the fix is not "add a number to a posting" but "build pay ranges you can actually defend." This guide walks you through who is covered, what your postings must say, what happens if you get it wrong, and the work worth starting now so 2027 is a formality instead of a fire drill.

TL;DR

• Delaware's HB 105 requires employers with 26 or more employees to disclose a pay range and a general description of benefits in job postings, effective September 26, 2027.
• The rule covers internal and external postings for jobs in Delaware and non-international remote roles offered by Delaware-based employers.
• Ranges must be set in good faith — tied to a pay scale, prior range, the actual range of people in equivalent roles, or the budgeted amount.
• Penalties run from a written warning on a first offense to $500–$10,000 per violation after that; enforcement sits with the Delaware DOL, and there is no private lawsuit.
• The hard part is not the disclosure — it is having ranges that hold up. Start with job evaluation and a defensible salary structure now.

What Delaware's HB 105 actually requires

The core rule is short. If you announce, post, or otherwise make known a job opportunity, you must disclose "the hourly or salary compensation range and a general description of the benefits and other compensation" for that role. That applies whether the posting is public-facing or internal to your own employees.

The law defines the compensation range as the minimum-to-maximum pay for the position, "set in good faith." Good faith is not a vibe — Delaware ties it to something concrete: an applicable pay scale, a previously determined range for the position, the actual range of others currently holding equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount for the role. That definition matters more than it looks. If a regulator or a candidate ever asks how you arrived at $95,000–$130,000, "we picked numbers that felt right" is not one of the four permitted answers.

A few role types get special handling. Commission jobs must disclose that pay is commission-based, but do not have to publish a range. Tipped jobs must disclose the tipped status and provide the base wage or a range of base wages. Roles under a collective bargaining agreement must disclose the range approved in the CBA, but only once the agreement is executed, amended, or renewed after the law's effective date.

Who is covered

The law reaches employers with 26 or more employees. There is a real ambiguity worth flagging: the statute does not spell out whether that 26-employee count includes only Delaware workers or your entire workforce. Until the Delaware Department of Labor issues regulations, the conservative read is to assume company-wide headcount triggers coverage once you are hiring in Delaware.

Coverage extends to jobs physically located in Delaware and to non-international remote positions offered by Delaware-based employers. If you are headquartered in Delaware and post a remote US role, expect it to count. If you are a multi-state employer hiring into Delaware, the same disclosure obligations attach to those Delaware postings.

There are sensible carve-outs. Temporary, interim, or acting roles that require an immediate hire are exempt from the disclosure requirement — though the DOL may write rules for those situations. And you are not on the hook for postings a third party digitally copies and republishes without your consent, which protects you from scraper sites reposting stale ads.

The requirements that are easy to miss

Two provisions get less attention than the salary range but carry real weight.

First, recordkeeping. You must make, keep, and preserve records of job descriptions and the salary and wage-rate history of each employee for at least three years, and hand them to the US Department of Labor on request. That is a documentation habit, not a one-time task, and it is far easier to build now than to reconstruct later.

Second, anti-retaliation. You cannot discharge or otherwise retaliate against someone for exercising their rights under the law — filing a complaint, giving information to the DOL, or testifying in a proceeding. A retaliation violation carries its own civil penalty of $500 to $10,000.

Penalties and enforcement

Delaware built a ramp, not a cliff. As Morgan Lewis notes in its analysis of the law, the Delaware Department of Labor administers and enforces the law; there is no private cause of action, so employees cannot sue you directly. A first offense earns a written warning. Each subsequent violation can bring a civil penalty between $500 and $10,000. Importantly, one non-compliant job opportunity counts as a single violation no matter how many times you posted it — so a role you advertised on five boards is one strike, not five.

Here is how Delaware stacks up against its neighbors on the two questions employers ask first.

If you operate across state lines, Delaware is one more row in a compliance matrix that keeps growing. Our multi-state pay transparency compliance guide tracks the full landscape, and the recent Virginia and Maine changes show how quickly the map is being redrawn.

Why 2027 is a job-evaluation problem, not a posting problem

Read the good-faith definition again. Three of the four permitted anchors — a pay scale, a prior range for the position, or the actual range of people in equivalent positions — assume you already know how jobs relate to one another. That is job evaluation, full stop. You cannot state a defensible range for a role until you know what the role is worth relative to the rest of your organization.

This is where many employers get caught. They treat a transparency law as a copywriting exercise, paste a wide range into a posting to stay "compliant," then discover that a $60,000 spread invites questions from every current employee who can now see it. Wide ranges are a tell. They signal that pay was never structured, and internal transparency exposes that faster than any regulator.

The durable fix is to score jobs against consistent, weighted compensable factors — skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions — so that every range traces back to the same logic. That is exactly what the point-factor method of job evaluation is built for, and it is what lets you attach a tight, explainable range to a posting and answer "why this number?" with a scorecard instead of a shrug. From there, a coherent salary structure turns those scores into bands you can publish without flinching.

Working out where your ranges would land today? See how PointFactors evaluates a job and produces a defensible range in minutes.

How to prepare before September 2027

You have roughly two years. Use the first one to build structure and the second to operationalize it.

Start by auditing every place a job gets advertised — your careers site, job boards, internal postings, and anything recruiters or agencies post on your behalf. Contact those third parties now so they understand the requirement is coming and will comply, a step employment-law practitioners flag as an early priority. Then pressure-test your ranges: pull a sample of roles you hire for in Delaware and ask whether you can explain each range using one of the four good-faith anchors. Where you cannot, that is your job-evaluation backlog.

In parallel, stand up the recordkeeping discipline the law expects — job descriptions and wage-rate history retained for three years — so the documentation exists before anyone asks for it. Finally, if you employ people in other transparency states, fold Delaware into the same process rather than treating it as a one-off. The states differ on thresholds and dates, but they all reward the same underlying work: pay ranges built on a method you can defend.

Frequently asked questions

When does Delaware's pay transparency law take effect? September 26, 2027 — two years after Governor Meyer signed HB 105 on September 26, 2025.

Which employers have to comply? Employers with 26 or more employees that post jobs located in Delaware, plus Delaware-based employers posting non-international remote roles. The law does not clearly state whether the 26-employee count is Delaware-only or company-wide, so plan conservatively until the DOL clarifies.

What exactly has to be in a job posting? The minimum-to-maximum pay range for the role and a general description of the benefits and other compensation. The range must be set in good faith against a pay scale, a prior range, the actual range of people in equivalent roles, or the budgeted amount.

Does the law apply to internal postings and promotions? Yes. The disclosure requirement covers both internal and external postings. If no posting exists, you must provide the information before any offer or discussion of compensation, and at the applicant's request.

What are the penalties for non-compliance? A written warning for a first offense, then civil penalties of $500 to $10,000 for each subsequent violation. One non-compliant job opportunity is a single violation regardless of how many times it was posted. The Delaware DOL enforces the law; there is no private right of action.

Are any roles exempt? Temporary, interim, or acting positions requiring an immediate hire are exempt from disclosure. Commission roles disclose their commission basis without a range; tipped roles disclose the base wage or base-wage range.

What should we do first? Confirm which roles you can already explain with a defensible range, and evaluate the ones you cannot. Structure beats scrambling — the states keep coming, and the same job-evaluation work satisfies all of them.

Delaware is not asking you to reveal a secret. It is asking you to stand behind your numbers. Employers who can do that in September 2027 will be the ones who did the job-evaluation work in 2026.

Ready to build ranges you can publish without hesitation? Book a PointFactors demo and see how fast defensible pay ranges come together.

Justin Hampton is the founder and CEO of PointFactors.