Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide

Massachusetts Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide

If you employ people in Massachusetts, the state's pay transparency rules are no longer a "coming soon" item on your compliance calendar. The salary-range posting requirement has been live since October 29, 2025, and the workforce data reporting requirement has been running even longer. What most comp teams miss is that the two parts of the law carry two different enforcement grace periods — and one of them closes this fall. That timing matters, because a defect you could quietly cure in October becomes a citable violation in November. This guide walks you through exactly what the law requires, who it covers, what the penalties are, and how to build pay ranges you can actually defend when an applicant or the Attorney General asks how you set them.

TL;DR

• Massachusetts employers with 25+ employees must post a good-faith pay range in every job posting and share it with applicants and current employees on request (effective October 29, 2025).
• Employers with 100+ employees that already file federal EEO reports must also submit those reports to the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
• Penalties escalate: a warning, then fines up to $500, then up to $1,000, then broader civil penalties.
• Two cure windows: the EEO data reporting grace period ends October 29, 2026; the pay-range posting grace period runs to October 29, 2027.
• The safest way to post a defensible range is to anchor it to a documented job evaluation, not a manager's gut feel.

What the law actually is

The formal name is An Act Relative to Salary Range Transparency, signed by Governor Maura Healey on July 31, 2024. People also call it the Massachusetts Wage Transparency Act. It amends Chapter 149 of the General Laws and adds two distinct obligations: a pay-range disclosure duty (Section 105F) and a workforce data reporting duty (Section 105E).

The logic behind it is the same logic driving pay transparency across the U.S. and the EU. When a pay range appears in the posting, candidates are more likely to apply and more likely to trust the employer, and the gender and racial wage gaps that thrive in secrecy get harder to sustain. Massachusetts became the eleventh state to require salary ranges in job postings, joining a group that now includes California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Washington, and others.

Who has to comply

Coverage turns on your Massachusetts headcount, and the two requirements use different thresholds.

A few coverage details trip employers up. "Employee" includes full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers. You calculate headcount as an average across every pay period in the prior calendar year, not a single-day snapshot. And out-of-state remote workers count only if their primary place of work is Massachusetts.

That last point cuts both ways for remote-first companies. A fully remote role that a Massachusetts resident will perform from home is a Massachusetts position — so the posting needs a range, even if your company has no office in the state.

The posting requirement, in practice

For any covered position, your job posting must state the annual salary range or hourly wage range you "reasonably and in good faith" expect to pay at the time of posting. The range should run from the lowest to the highest figure you'd genuinely pay for that role. A $60,000–$180,000 range that technically "covers" the job but signals nothing is exactly the kind of bad-faith posting regulators are watching for.

The disclosure duty doesn't stop at postings. Applicants can ask for the range for the specific job they're applying to. Current employees can ask for the range of their own position — even when there's no vacancy — and for any role they're being promoted or transferred into. Retaliating against someone for asking is prohibited.

Commission and tipped roles aren't exempt. If pay is based on a piece rate or commission, you disclose the piece-rate or commission range you expect to pay.

If you operate in more than one disclosure state, resist the urge to build a separate process for each. The cleaner path is a single internal standard for how ranges get set and documented, then applied everywhere you hire. We walk through that multi-state approach in our 2026 pay transparency compliance guide.

The reporting requirement most teams forget

The posting rule gets the headlines, but the §105E reporting duty is where the nearer deadline sits. If you have 100 or more Massachusetts employees and you already file EEO reports with the EEOC, you now file those same reports with the Secretary of the Commonwealth for transmission to the state's labor office. It does not create new data — it redirects data you already produce.

The filing schedule follows the federal report type:

Only employers already required to file these reports with the EEOC have to submit them to the state. If the EEOC doesn't require the report from you, Massachusetts doesn't either.

Penalties and the two cure windows

Both requirements carry the same escalating penalty ladder: a warning for the first offense, a fine of up to $500 for the second, up to $1,000 for the third, and broader civil penalties under Chapter 149 for a fourth or later offense. The Attorney General's Fair Labor Division enforces the law and takes complaints from applicants and employees.

Here's the timing detail worth flagging on your compliance calendar. During an initial grace period, a covered employer gets two business days to cure a defect after receiving a Notice to Cure from the AG's office. But the two obligations phase out of that grace period on different dates:

• EEO data reporting: cure period runs until October 29, 2026.
• Pay-range posting: cure period runs until October 29, 2027.

So a 100-plus-employee company that's sloppy about its EEO filing loses its safety net first — this October. If your February filing slipped or you're unsure whether it transmitted correctly, fix it now, while a Notice to Cure still gives you a two-day off-ramp.

How to post a range you can defend

A pay range is only "good faith" if you can explain how you built it. When an applicant, an employee, or a regulator asks why a role sits where it does, "that's what the market pays" is a weak answer. A documented job evaluation is a strong one.

That's the core of what we build at PointFactors. A point-factor job evaluation scores every role against weighted compensable factors — skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions — so that the internal logic of your ranges is consistent and written down. When two roles land in the same pay band, you can point to the factor scores that put them there. When they land in different bands, you can show why. That's the difference between a range you posted and a range you can stand behind.

If you're rebuilding your ranges to withstand this kind of scrutiny, start with the mechanics of defensible pay ranges and the fundamentals of salary bands. And if you suspect your current pay is uneven, a pay equity audit will surface the gaps before a candidate — or the AG — does.

Frequently asked questions

When did the Massachusetts pay transparency law take effect? The pay-range posting requirement took effect October 29, 2025. The workforce data reporting requirement began February 1, 2025 for EEO-1, EEO-3, and EEO-5 filers, and February 1, 2026 for EEO-4 filers.

Does the law apply to out-of-state employers? Yes, if you have 25 or more employees whose primary place of work is Massachusetts (for posting) or 100 or more (for reporting). A remote worker counts toward your Massachusetts headcount only if their primary place of work is in the state.

How wide can a pay range be? The law doesn't set a numeric cap, but the range must reflect what you reasonably and in good faith expect to pay for that role at the time of posting. Deliberately huge ranges that signal nothing invite scrutiny.

Do I have to give current employees the range for their own job? Yes. A current employee can request the pay range for their existing position at any time, even when there is no open vacancy, and you must provide it.

What are the penalties for non-compliance? A warning for the first offense, a fine up to $500 for the second, up to $1,000 for the third, and broader civil penalties for a fourth or subsequent offense. The Attorney General enforces the law.

Which deadline should I worry about first? If you have 100 or more Massachusetts employees, the EEO reporting cure period ends October 29, 2026, before the posting cure period ends in 2027. Confirm your EEO filings transmitted correctly now.

Get your ranges ready before the grace period closes

Massachusetts is telling you what dozens of jurisdictions will tell you next: publish a number, and be able to explain it. Employers that treat this as a documentation problem — not just a posting problem — will spend the next few years answering pay questions calmly instead of scrambling. If you want ranges backed by a consistent, written job evaluation you can defend to any applicant or regulator, book a PointFactors demo and see how point-factor scoring turns your pay ranges into decisions you can stand behind.

Justin Hampton is the founder and CEO of PointFactors, where he helps HR and compensation leaders build defensible, transparent pay structures using AI-powered point-factor job evaluation.