Nevada Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide
Date Published
Nevada Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide
If you hire in Nevada, your pay transparency obligations look different from the ones grabbing headlines in California, New York, or Colorado. Nevada does not make you put a salary range in your job ads. Instead, it makes you hand a candidate a range after they interview, and it flatly bans you from asking what they earned in their last job. That combination catches out-of-state employers off guard all the time, because the habits that keep you compliant in a posting state are not the habits Nevada rewards.
This guide breaks down exactly what Nevada's Senate Bill 293 requires, who it covers, when you owe a range to an applicant versus an existing employee, and how the Labor Commissioner enforces it. You will also see why the safest way to meet the standard is to know what every job is worth before anyone asks. Get the salary-history ban wrong, and a single interview can turn into a $5,000 penalty.
TL;DR
- Nevada's pay transparency rule comes from SB 293, which took effect October 1, 2021, and lives at NRS 613.133.
- You must automatically give a wage or salary range or rate to any applicant who completes an interview — no request required.
- For an internal promotion or transfer, you owe a range only when the employee has applied, interviewed or been offered the role, and asked for it.
- You cannot seek an applicant's salary history or use it to decide whether to hire them or how much to pay them. You can ask about their salary expectations.
- Nevada does not require a salary range in job postings. It is a post-interview disclosure state, not a posting state.
- The Nevada Labor Commissioner enforces the law and can impose a penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, plus investigation costs and attorney's fees.
What Nevada's SB 293 actually requires
On June 2, 2021, Nevada enacted Senate Bill 293, which added NRS 613.133 to the state's employment-practices chapter. The rule took effect October 1, 2021, making Nevada one of the earlier states in the modern pay transparency wave. It does two distinct things: it forces disclosure of pay ranges at a specific point in hiring, and it bans salary-history inquiries.
The disclosure piece is the part employers most often misread. Under NRS 613.133(2), you must provide the wage or salary range or rate to an applicant who has completed an interview for the position. This is automatic. The candidate does not have to ask. Once the interview is done, the range is owed. That single detail separates Nevada from posting states, where the number goes in the advertisement, and from request-only states, where the candidate has to prompt you first.
For current employees seeking a promotion or transfer, the trigger is narrower. You owe a range only when all three conditions are met: the employee has applied for the new role, has completed an interview for it or been offered it, and has requested the range. Miss any one of those and the obligation has not kicked in yet. In practice, that means internal moves are request-based, while external applicants are automatic.
Who has to comply
Nevada's law is broad on the employer side. NRS 613.133 defines "employer" to include public and private employers in the state, and it names the State of Nevada, its agencies, and its political subdivisions specifically. There is no headcount threshold written into the statute, so a small business and a large enterprise face the same core duty. Employment agencies that place workers are covered too.
The practical test is simpler than it sounds: if you interview candidates for roles based in Nevada, you are in scope. That is true whether you are a Las Vegas casino operator, a Reno logistics firm, or a mostly-remote company headquartered elsewhere that interviews a Nevada-based applicant. If your hiring reaches into the state, the post-interview range and the salary-history ban apply to you.
The salary-history ban is where employers slip
The disclosure rule gets attention, but the salary-history ban in NRS 613.133(1) is where most violations happen, usually by accident. The statute prohibits three things:
- Seeking an applicant's wage or salary history, orally or in writing, directly or through a recruiter.
- Relying on that history to decide whether to make an offer or to set the pay rate.
- Refusing to interview, hire, promote, or employ an applicant, or retaliating against them, because they would not hand over their history.
That third point matters for how you train interviewers. A hiring manager who says "we usually ask for a recent pay stub" has created liability. So has a recruiter who screens out a candidate for declining to share past pay. The ban also reaches your agents, so an outside recruiting firm asking the question on your behalf is your problem, not just theirs.
There is one thing the law explicitly allows. Under NRS 613.133(3), you may ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the role they are applying for. The line is clean: what they hope to earn going forward is fair game; what they earned in the past is off-limits. Build that distinction into your interview scripts and your applicant-tracking forms, because it is the single easiest place to trip.
What Nevada does not require
Because so many states now demand a range in the posting itself, multi-state employers often assume Nevada does too. It does not. There is no job-advertisement disclosure mandate in NRS 613.133. You are free to post ranges statewide as a matter of policy, but Nevada law does not compel it.
That gap changes how you should think about a multi-state rollout. If you standardize on posting ranges everywhere, you will clear Nevada's bar and then some — but you still have to nail the post-interview handoff and the salary-history ban, neither of which a posting solves. The table below shows where Nevada sits relative to the two other common models.
Compliance model | When the range is owed | Example states |
|---|---|---|
Posting-based | In the job advertisement itself | California, Colorado, New York, Washington |
Post-interview (automatic) | After the applicant completes an interview | Nevada |
Request-based | Only when the applicant or employee asks | Portions of several state and local rules |
If you operate across several of these regimes, do not solve them one state at a time. A single internal standard — built on real pay ranges you can defend — clears every model at once. Our multi-state pay transparency compliance guide maps the full patchwork so you can set that standard once.
If you are rebuilding ranges to hand candidates with confidence, a free demo of PointFactors shows how a structured job-evaluation score becomes a defensible pay range in minutes.
Enforcement and penalties
Nevada routes complaints through the Office of the Labor Commissioner. Under NRS 613.133, violating any provision is an unlawful employment practice, and any person may file a complaint with the Commissioner. The Commissioner may then impose an administrative penalty of up to $5,000 for each violation. On top of that, if a penalty is imposed, the Commissioner can recover the costs of the proceeding, including investigative costs and attorney's fees.
Two features make this worth taking seriously. First, the penalty is per violation, so a systemic problem — an interview script that asks for salary history, used across dozens of candidates — multiplies fast. Second, the cost-recovery provision means a losing employer can end up paying more than the headline penalty. The cheapest compliance strategy is to fix the interview process before a complaint ever lands.
How to get compliant before your next interview
Treat Nevada as two quick projects: clean up the intake, then make sure you actually have ranges to disclose.
- Scrub salary history out of your process. Remove the question from applications, ATS forms, and interview scripts. Tell recruiters and hiring managers, in writing, that past pay is off-limits and salary expectations are fine.
- Build the post-interview handoff. Decide who provides the range and when, so every interviewed applicant gets one automatically. Bake it into your interview-to-offer workflow rather than leaving it to memory.
- Make sure a real range exists for every role. You cannot disclose what you have not defined. If your bands are ad hoc, every disclosure becomes a guess. Ground them in market data and a consistent internal method — see our guide to building defensible pay ranges.
- Handle internal moves on request. Set a simple rule so that when an employee applies, interviews, and asks about a promotion or transfer range, they get it without friction.
- Pressure-test the ranges for equity. Where similar roles are paid differently, document the legitimate reason or close the gap. Our pay equity audit guide walks through the sequence.
The through-line is preparation. A company that already knows what each job is worth — because it evaluates roles on consistent, weighted factors like the point-factor method — treats Nevada's disclosure rule as a formality. A company guessing at pay treats every interview as a moment of exposure.
Frequently asked questions
When did Nevada's pay transparency law take effect? Senate Bill 293 was enacted in 2021 and took effect on October 1, 2021. Its requirements live at NRS 613.133.
Does Nevada require salary ranges in job postings? No. Nevada does not mandate a pay range in job advertisements. It requires you to give a range or rate to an applicant after they complete an interview, which makes Nevada a post-interview disclosure state rather than a posting state.
Do I have to wait for the candidate to ask for the range? No. For external applicants, disclosure is automatic once the interview is complete. The employee-request condition applies only to internal promotions and transfers.
Can Nevada employers ask about salary history? No. Under NRS 613.133, you cannot seek an applicant's wage or salary history or rely on it to decide whether to hire them or how to set their pay. You may, however, ask what salary they expect for the role.
Which employers are covered? The statute covers public and private employers in Nevada, including the state, its agencies, and its political subdivisions, as well as employment agencies. There is no minimum-headcount threshold in the law, so if you interview candidates for Nevada roles, you are covered.
What are the penalties for a violation? The Nevada Labor Commissioner can impose an administrative penalty of up to $5,000 per violation, and may also recover the costs of the proceeding, including investigative costs and attorney's fees.
Does the rule apply to internal promotions and transfers? Yes, but on request. You owe a range for a promotion or transfer only when the employee has applied, has interviewed or been offered the role, and has requested the range.
Put a defensible range behind every offer
Nevada's law rewards employers who already know what each job is worth and can prove it. If your pay ranges rest on a consistent, factor-based evaluation, disclosure is a formality and the salary-history ban is a non-issue. If they do not, every interview becomes a range you have to invent on the spot. Book a PointFactors demo and see how quantitative job evaluation gives you ranges you can share today and defend tomorrow.
Justin Hampton is the founder and CEO of PointFactors, a compensation platform that brings AI-powered point-factor job evaluation to HR and compensation teams.
Sources:
- Nevada Legislature, NRS Chapter 613 — Employment Practices (§ 613.133)
- Nevada Revised Statutes, § 613.133 full text (Justia)
- Nevada Office of the Labor Commissioner, labor.nv.gov