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How to Post a Compliant Job Posting Across Multiple States

One job posting, five states, five different rulebooks. That is the normal situation for multi-state hiring now: 15 U.S. jurisdictions have pay-transparency posting requirements in force, and they do not all ask for the same things. A posting that is fine in one state can be missing a required disclosure in another — and the missing piece is usually the pay range itself.

This guide is a practical workflow, not a legal opinion. It explains the three things to check, how to figure out which states apply to a posting, and a draft → check → fix → re-check routine you can run before every publish. For the rule in any single state, always check that state's page (linked below) and, when it matters, confirm with the state labor department or an employment attorney.

The three things every multi-state posting needs checked

Across all 15 jurisdictions with posting requirements in force, the checks boil down to three elements. Whether each one is required depends on the state:

  1. A pay range. Required in all 15 jurisdictions. This is the central disclosure these laws were written to require, and it is also the most-missed one: in our own research, the pay range was missing in most of the postings that failed. Vague phrases like “competitive salary” with no figures do not count — the posting needs an actual range or figure. Open-ended “starting at” or “up to” ranges are a problem in at least some states; check the state page for the wording that state expects.
  2. A general description of benefits and other compensation. Required in Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington — not in the other eight posting jurisdictions. A brief mention (health insurance, paid time off, retirement) is generally what is asked for, not a full benefits booklet. If you post in any of those seven states, include it; including it everywhere is the simpler workflow.
  3. An application deadline. Required in Colorado only. Colorado requires a good-faith estimate of the anticipated close date, unless the role is evergreen, in which case the posting must state that applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. “Open until filled” alone does not satisfy it. No other posting jurisdiction in our dataset requires a deadline — but if you hire in Colorado, this is the requirement most often missed.

Some states also apply only above an employee-count threshold, and thresholds differ by state. The state pages note where a threshold applies — check the page for each state you hire in rather than assuming a posting is covered or exempt.

Which states apply to a posting?

Start with where the role is located — the location listed on the posting is the usual starting point. For remote and multi-state roles, the picture is less tidy: most pay-transparency laws apply based on whether the role could be filled by someone located in the state, not where the employer is headquartered. A remote posting open to applicants in Colorado is typically covered by Colorado's rules, and the same logic applies in other covered states. That is a general pattern, not a rule you can apply blindly — remote postings with no stated location, or with a footprint that excludes some states, are exactly the cases where a careful check matters most.

The safe workflow is to check the posting against every state it could plausibly hire in, not just the headquarters state. Our pay-transparency checker lets you pick a state and checks the posting against that state's requirements; run it once per applicable state for a multi-state role, or use the bulk posting audit for a whole batch at once.

Two states deserve a special note: Nevada and Rhode Island do not require a pay range in the posting itself — the range must be given on request instead. They are not posting jurisdictions, so they are not graded as such; see their state pages for what applies and when.

The workflow: draft → check → fix → re-check

  1. Draft. Write the posting with the pay range, benefits description, and — for Colorado — deadline already in it, rather than bolting them on at the end. The job description generator builds these checks into the draft. If you drafted in ChatGPT, grade that draft with our ChatGPT-draft entry point instead of posting it as-is.
  2. Check. Paste the posting into the checker for each state the role could hire in — or paste a posting link into the URL posting checker. A check takes seconds and catches exactly the misses our research keeps finding.
  3. Fix. Add what is missing — usually the pay range — and reword anything the check flagged. Fix the posting text itself, not just the grade: the grade is a screen, not the posting.
  4. Re-check. Run the check again on the edited text before you publish, and again whenever the posting text, location, or hiring states change. A posting that passed last quarter may not pass after an edit — and laws change, so re-check on a schedule, not just at first publish.

For a full batch — say, every open role across five states — the bulk posting audit checks up to 200 postings at once from a CSV, so the routine above scales from one posting to a whole careers page.

State pages: the rule for each state

Each page below states what that jurisdiction requires, with a link to the official labor-department source. Requirements were last reviewed against official sources on October 13, 2026; laws change, so confirm the current rule before relying on it.

Penalty schedules for non-compliant postings are summarized on our penalties page. Penalties change; that page is a summary, not legal advice.

What the research says about multi-state postings

We grade real large-employer postings against these same state requirements and publish the method and the limits alongside the findings — no employer names, no legal conclusions, checked never certified. In our follow-up wave, 19 of 84 gradable postings (22.6%) failed at least one state requirement; in the baseline wave, 13 of 76 (17.1%) failed. The comparison does not prove a rise — the confidence intervals overlap and the samples differ — but both waves agree on the pattern: the pay range itself is the most-missed requirement, and the failures concentrate in specific posting processes rather than spreading evenly. See the full findings on our research hub.

What is coming (disclosed, not yet in force)

Requirements keep expanding, which is why a posting workflow built for one state breaks as you add states. Items disclosed on our study pages — not graded, because they are not yet in force — include Delaware's posting requirement (September 2027), Columbus, Ohio (January 2027), and the end of Washington's cure window (July 27, 2027). Plan for them now; do not grade against them yet.

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Pay-transparency requirements differ by state and change over time — see our state law pages for specifics, and confirm the current rule for your situation with your state labor department (free to contact) or an employment attorney. A passing check does not certify a posting as legally compliant, and a failing check is not a legal determination that an employer broke the law — our checker is a screen, checked never certified.