Salary History Question Bans

Philadelphia, PA – Effective September 1, 2020: Philadelphia employers are prohibited from inquiring about a prospective employee’s wage history, conditioning employment or consideration for an interview on disclosure of wage history, retaliating against a prospective employee for failing to comply with any wage history inquiry, or relying on the wage history of a prospective employee in determining their wages, unless the applicant “knowingly and willingly” disclosed their salary history to the employer. The goal of the Ordinance is to help close the wage gap for women and people of color.

Researchers at Boston University published one of the first major studies examining salary-history bans in about a dozen states. They found that following such bans, pay increased a year later for people who changed jobs by about 5% overall. For women, the increase was 8%, and for Black workers it was 13%. “Salary histories,” the researchers wrote, “appear to account for much of the persistence of residual wage gaps.”