Colorado is more transparent about wages than any other state

Updates to the Equal Pay for Equal Work law have begun. Plus: Homeownership, 487 people waiting 10+ weeks for unemployment benefits, labor department jobs and more!

By Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun

Two years after a Colorado law began requiring job postings to say how much a job paid, the state has the highest wage transparency rate in the nation.?

Of course, that’s not a big surprise. Colorado was the first to pass a law. Its?Equal Pay for Equal Work Act?passed in 2019. Several states followed. And so has interest by companies hunting for wage transparency trends, or building businesses around it.?

Aspen Tech Labs, an advertising-tech agency in Aspen focused on recruitment, is one of them. They developed a salary parsing tool to extract wage information from job postings. It started tracking salaries last year as part of its overall business, which is to “monitor over 6 million jobs just in the U.S. from over 120,000 different sources,” sales manager Gabby Schulte said.

Tracking salary data helps the company respond to customers who want to get a better sense of what competitors pay. It also gives them insight into whether companies are complying. Aspen Tech Labs found that the number of Colorado job openings with salaries went from 35% in October to 49% in January. That’s a 40% increase in three months.?

As of Friday, Colorado’s rate was 61%, which was the highest wage transparency rate nationwide. If it wasn’t for Colorado’s Equal Pay law, it’s unlikely this would have happened. The law aims to reach pay parity for women and underrepresented workers doing the same work as white men.?

“The top four are states that have legislation, first Colorado, then California, Washington and New York,” said Ryan Gifford, a data analyst for the company. “Overall in the U.S., we’re seeing about 25% of jobs (include) a salary. And that trend has increased about 10% in the last six months. So we are seeing a steady increase and I think that’s a result of some pressure from the states that have legislation.”

Colorado’s law passed in 2019 and went into effect in January 2021. New York City’s law went into effect in November. Laws from?California?and?Washington?started in January, with the state of?New York?expected to start this year.

Aspen Tech Labs found that even though a few out-of-state companies?may still exclude?Coloradans from applying for their remote jobs — a violation of the state law — most do comply. As of Friday, there were 3,980 remote vacancies in Colorado. Of those, 66% posted a salary. In the U.S., there were 215,616 remote vacancies, with 47% sharing a salary.

“There are still listings that exclude Colorado applicants, but it’s difficult to quantify how many because of how each employer phrases it,” Gifford said.?

But what happened to the 40% of jobs that don’t share wages? Some just aren’t sharing it and are out of compliance, said Isabelle Woodrow, Aspen’s product manager. But she also admitted that the tool may not be extracting the needed information and “could be missing salaries in some cases.” It’s a work in progress.

It’s also too early to say if the laws have had the intended effect of pay equity. But one other detail showing up in Aspen’s data is that pay seems to be dropping overall, as seen in this chart.?

Woodrow said the decline in hourly wages is probably due to the volume of new job postings sharing salaries. Lower-wage jobs tend to dominate the listings so that could be pulling the overall figures down, too.?

In Colorado, for example, health care jobs had the largest share of job postings, followed by information technology jobs and then food service and retail. Food and retail top out at around $20 an hour, while health care jobs are less than $30 an hour. The lowest range of salaries for IT jobs hovered above $35 an hour with the mid range higher than $50 an hour.?

Wage transparency data has given job seekers a basic tool they didn’t have before: a solid pay expectation. And for employers?

“Our customers want to understand what’s happening in the employment market,” Schulte said. “It’ll tell you if you’re starting a business or opening a new location and have to hire people, what do you have to pay to attract talent.”

? Related:?A?survey?conducted by job-search site Adzuna found that companies that embraced wage transparency attracted more job seekers. Some 54% declined the job offer after finding out the salary while?one-third of job seekers?said they wouldn’t even show up for the interview without knowing how much the job paid, according to an?analysis?by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Readers mostly agree home ownership?

The spike in housing prices in recent years and the yearlong run-up in interest rates has shut many would-be homeowners out of the market.?

But at 61%, most What’s Working readers do own, at least that’s the outcome of the latest reader poll (not a newsletter subscriber? Get it delivered each Saturday by?signing up right here). That 61% rate, by the way, is lower than the state’s fourth-quarter homeownership rate of 69.7%, which ranks us 23rd nationwide, according to?census data.

It’s definitely disheartening to see responses like this: “No, I’m homeless” or “I’ve paid landlords’ mortgages half my life but now I’m homeless due to rent increases.”

For folks struggling, please check with resources available at?211colorado.org?(or call 2-1-1) for help with bills. The Community Economic Defense Project, at?cedproject.org, also provides legal help for renters facing eviction.

Several readers had similar solutions to the dilemma. More affordable housing! More living wages! Restrict second homes that become Airbnbs! Deed restrictions! Zoning changes allowing dense housing and smaller homes! More stuff like Habitat for Humanity!?

A handful of comments, edited for space:

“The present homeowner model prohibits low-income participation. Mortgages favor only the underwriters/financial companies. The monthly mortgage payment (or rent) simply pulls cash away from workers,” John Westover of Fort Collins wrote.

“Creating small house alternatives. Not everyone needs a large house, but building new houses that are smaller to keep construction costs down might be an alternative solution to government intervention. I don’t need a big house, I just want one to call my own,” Luke Munchrath in Littleton said.

“Invest in public-owned affordable housing and implement rent control with a building-age carveout — for example, buildings become subject to rent control, say, 10 years after construction,” Roxann Elliott in Federal Heights wrote.?

Thanks to everyone who participated. Play again?

This week’s poll: The tipping point

Read an update on the second Equal Pay law, plus more working bits >>

Miss a column? Catch up:

• What’s Working: When Colorado’s tight labor market met the state’s housing affordability issue
• What’s Working: Colorado business bankruptcies decline; startups on the rise?
• What’s Working: Get ready for Colorado’s wage transparency law, part 2?
• What’s Working: Colorado’s unemployment rate dropped, but so did the number of people in the workforce?
• What’s Working: How Colorado’s high egg and energy prices mesh with its slowing inflation

What’s Working?is a Colorado Sun column about surviving in today’s economy. Email?[email protected]?with stories, tips or questions. Read the?archive, ask a question at?cosun.co/heyww?and don’t miss the next one by signing up at?coloradosun.com/getww.?