How Pay Transparency Laws Are Promoting Fair Wages for Physicians

Last Updated: Feb 15, 2024

Unfortunate wage gaps have long existed among members of the American workforce, physician or otherwise. It is well known that these pay disparities are based in, and continue to promote, inequality between genders, races, and other socioeconomic factors. A lesser-known fact is that these wage gaps are fueled by a lack of transparency. Public access to salaries and other compensation data allows employees to realize when they are being underpaid and hold their employers accountable. In recent years, an increasing amount of legislation has been proposed and passed to help provide pay transparency for the public. These pieces of legislation are widely known as pay transparency laws, and they are gaining popularity in many cities and states.

We need to talk about your pay

Historically, our society has considered discussion of salaries, bonuses, and other compensation numbers to be inappropriate. Employees are often uncomfortable divulging their pay level for fear of being judged, resented, or viewed as arrogant. However, this places you at a disadvantage when striving for a raise or just a salary that is fair and comparable to your peers who are doing the same work. Without knowing what other physicians earn, you will never know whether you are being underpaid and by how much.

Employers enjoy a lack of pay transparency precisely because employees are kept in the dark. When you are undercompensated and do not know any better, your employer does not have to worry about giving you a raise or you leaving for higher compensation at another practice. Sometimes employers go as far as implementing employment contract clauses restricting you from discussing your salary with other employees. These clauses are illegal under federal law, but employees are not always aware, and that does not stop employers from trying.

Laws providing pay transparency help take the pressure off employees. When salaries are public knowledge, you will not have to make a personal decision whether to openly discuss your pay. Transparency also holds employers accountable, as it exposes any wage gaps and forces employers to rectify them, or else receive public backlash and risk losing employees. All things considered, pay transparency laws are powerful tools for promoting fair compensation for everyone.

The recent rise of pay transparency

Pay transparency laws have been discussed for a long time, but they gained significant attention and momentum over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the lack of empathy many employers had for physicians and other employees. As workers were furloughed, got laid off, or quit on their own accord, the shuffle caused more individuals to realize just how underpaid and mistreated they had been.

As the job market recovered from the pandemic, supply began to exceed demand and job seekers gained the upper hand. With newfound priorities, current and prospective employees began to expect more from employers. These new expectations, combined with an increased demand for workers, helped bring the pay transparency topic into the limelight and supporting legislation began to follow.

Current laws and regulations

Pay transparency laws vary in scope and depth, but they generally require an employer to disclose a salary range at some point in their hiring process. Many times, this means that a salary range must be included in a job listing. In other cases, salary information needs to be available upon request, maybe after an application or initial interview. All these details vary by exact location since there is currently no nationwide pay transparency law.

The number of locations passing pay transparency legislation is growing rapidly, but the following are most of the states, cities, and counties which currently have some form of pay transparency law in place.

States:

• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Maryland
• Nevada
• New York
• Rhode Island
• Washington

Cities:

• Cincinnati, OH
• Ithaca, NY
• Jersey City, NJ
• New York City, NY
• Toledo, OH

Counties:

• Westchester County, NY

Some of these areas, like Colorado, require extensive transparency from employers. All job postings must include salary ranges. In other locations, like California, you are entitled to a salary range only if you ask an employer to disclose the information. If you do not ask, an employer is not required to give you any salary information during hiring.

Because of such caveats, it is important to know the laws for the location in which you will be practicing. Sometimes a state, like New York, may have a widespread pay transparency law in place, but there are more detailed requirements for cities or counties within that state. When job searching, make sure to check laws for your most specific location so you know whether an employer must give you a salary range and at what point in the hiring process they are obligated to do so.

Challenges with transparency and how to confront them

Although movement toward pay transparency for some parts of the country has been rapid and effective, we still have lots of room for improvement. There are far more states who have yet to enact pay transparency laws, and many current regulations have seen pushback from employers. Keep in mind that employers will often look for loopholes in these laws to avoid giving you the salary information you deserve. Hopefully, pay transparency laws will continue to expect higher levels of transparency from employers, and maybe some form of federal regulation is yet to come. Until then, it will likely be up to you to know when to ask an employer for a salary range, so you can make more informed decisions regarding your employment.

While not all employers are required to give you salary information at this time, there are ways to find it elsewhere. PAMED has partnered with Resolve to help you uncover the salary you should be earning. Resolve reviews and negotiates physician employment contracts every day, and salaries from those contracts are anonymously included in their proprietary dataset, rData. Physicians also have the option to submit their compensation without purchasing a review service, so the available data pool can be expanded further. All the data comes directly from physicians, as opposed to employers, increasing pay transparency by yet another level. rData allows you to view individual salaries, signing bonuses, and more from other physicians in your location, so you always know the market trends for your job.