By Samantha Halem, Catherine Reuben, Sarah Ruter, Richard Loftus, Alicia Ward, Caroline Galiatsos September 30, 2025
Reminder: Effective October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees based in Massachusetts will be required to disclose pay ranges in three circumstances: (1) in job postings; (2) to employees offered promotions or transfers; and (3) to applicants and employees upon request.
The implementation of this posting and disclosure requirement marks the second phase of the Massachusetts Wage Transparency Law, known as the “Frances Perkins Workplace Equity Act” (FPWEA), which added new sections to the Commonwealth’s wage and hour laws that impose data reporting and compensation disclosure requirements on employers. The first phase went into effect on February 1, 2025, when employers with 100 or more Massachusetts-based employees began mandatory compliance with data reporting requirements, including submission of EEO-1s, EEO-3s, and EEO-5s to the Secretary of State.
Overview of Posting and Disclosure Requirements
The Attorney General has provided guidance as well as answers to FAQs on the FPWEA. Key highlights of the law and guidance from the Attorney General include:
• Mandatory Pay Ranges Disclosure: Employers with 25 or more employees based in Massachusetts must disclose pay ranges in job postings for all Massachusetts-based positions. In addition, such employers must provide the pay range for a particular position to (i) a current employee who is offered a promotion or transfer to a new position with different job responsibilities, and (ii) upon request, any current employee holding such a position or an applicant for such position.
• Scope of “Employee”: For the purposes of the FPWEA, an employee is considered located within Massachusetts if their “primary place of work” is within the Commonwealth. This includes:
• Applicants: “Applicants” are any individuals applying for a particular position, regardless of the individual’s level of qualification. Employers are required to share compensation information upon request with any individual applying for or inquiring about a position, not just those who are reasonably deemed qualified.
• Headcount Calculation: In determining an employer’s headcount, the law considers all full-time, parttime, seasonal, and temporary employees. The headcount should be taken once per year and should be a calculation of the average number of employees working over all pay periods. As such, to determine their headcount, employers should add up the number of employees working for them in each pay period and divide by the number of pay periods.
• Job Posting Requirements: In job postings, employers must include annual salary or hourly wage ranges that the employer reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for the position at the time of the posting. For commission-based jobs or those with piece rate pay structures, employers should include the piece rate or commission range they reasonably expect to pay for the position. Employers are not required to include information about other benefits, such as insurance or retirement plans, but may elect to do so.
• Violations: The Attorney General has exclusive jurisdiction to enforce the posting and disclosure requirements. Until October 29, 2027, employers will have two business days to cure defects upon receipt of a Notice to Cure letter from the Attorney General’s Office. If an employer is found to have violated the posting or disclosure requirements, the law provides for the following penalties:
An “offense” includes one or more job postings for positions made by the same employer during a 48- hour period.
• Protections Against Retaliation: The FPWEA prohibits retaliation against employees or applicants who exercise their rights under the law. Discriminatory actions, such as adverse treatment related to salary inquiries, complaints, and legal proceedings, are strictly prohibited.
Intersection with Pay Equity
With job postings under the FPWEA expected to increase the focus on pay for both applicants and current employees, employers should also be prepared to handle questions from their current workforce about pay decisions and the rationale behind pay ranges.
In preparation for publicly posting pay ranges, employers may wish to take this opportunity to review their compensation philosophy and pay bands, and/or to conduct a pay analysis of their current employees. Such a pay analysis can have the added benefit of potentially providing an affirmative defense to a claim under the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act (MEPA). which requires equal pay between employees of different genders who perform “comparable work” (i.e., work that requires substantially similar skill, effort, and responsibility, and is performed under similar working conditions), unless the pay difference is permitted by one of the six factors listed under MEPA: (i) seniority system, (ii) merit system, (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production, sales, or revenue, (iv) the geographic location of the job; (v) education, training or experience that are reasonably related to the job, or (vi) travel, if the travel is a regular and necessary condition of the job. Specifically, employers will not be liable under MEPA if they can show that they conducted a good faith, reasonable self-evaluation of their pay practices within the last three years and before an action is filed and reasonable progress has been made toward eliminating any unlawful gender-based wage differentials that such self-evaluation reveals. HRW recommends that employers conducting a pay analysis do so in consultation with counsel.
While conducting a pay analysis or self-evaluation is not required for compliance with MEPA or the FPWEA, employers should consider the benefits of doing so. Of course, any pay decisions must be made in compliance with MEPA.
Multistate Employers
Multistate employers should consider what other pay transparency laws they may be subject to, as an increasing number of states have adopted pay transparency laws in recent years, and some require additional information to be disclosed, such as benefits information.
Multistate employers should also review applicable pay equity laws in each jurisdiction where they have employees, as certain state equal pay laws require equal pay for comparable work among employees of a variety of protected classes, not just gender (as is the case under MEPA). While employer intent is generally irrelevant for determining whether there has been a pay equity law violation, intentional discrimination (i.e., paying an employee less than another employee of a different protected class because of their protected class status, such as race, gender, religion, national origin, etc.) is prohibited by a variety of federal and state statutes.
HRW attorneys are available to discuss the requirements of the FPWEA as well as to provide guidance on any pay analysis an employer may choose to undertake in preparation for posting pay ranges.
For more information about the FPWEA, please refer to our previous client alerts from August 13, 2024 and January 21, 2025.
For questions or more information, please contact:
• Sarah Ruter (sruter@hrwlawyers.com / 781-235-4879);
• Samantha Halem (shalem@hrwlawyers.com / 781-235-4878);
• Catherine Reuben (creuben@hrwlawyers.com / 617-348-4316);
• Alicia Ward (award@hrwlawyers.com / 617-348-4357);
• Richard Loftus (rloftus@hrwlawyers.com / 617-348-4360);
• Caroline Galiatsos (cgaliatsos@hrwlawyers.com / 617-348-4363); or
• Any member of the HRW Team.
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