Pay transparency laws put a salary range in the job posting in at least thirteen states and the District of Columbia confirmed for this guide, and the employer-size thresholds run from one employee to thirty.
If your practice hires where one applies, an ad with no range can be a violation, and several of these laws address commission or piece-rate pay, which can bear on ProSal postings.
Here: which states require a posted range, what a good-faith range means, how to disclose production pay, remote postings, and the penalties.
Rules vary by state and change
This guide explains federal rules and the state rules it names, as of the date above.
Employment law and veterinary practice rules differ by state and are revised often, so confirm current requirements with your state veterinary board, labor agency or employment counsel before you act on them.
It is general information, not legal advice.
States and cities with posting laws and employer-size thresholds
The employer-size threshold decides whether the law reaches your practice, and the states draw it at very different points.
The posting-range laws confirmed in statute or agency text for this guide:
| Jurisdiction | Who is covered | The posting must include |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado | Every employer with at least one employee in Colorado | The compensation (a rate or range), a general description of bonuses, commissions or tips, the benefits offered, and how and when to apply |
| California | Employers with 15 or more employees | The pay scale — a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range for the position — in any job posting, including postings placed by third parties |
| Washington | Employers with 15 or more employees | The wage scale or salary range, or the fixed wage if only one is offered, plus a general description of all benefits and other compensation |
| New York State | Businesses with four or more employees | Compensation ranges for advertised jobs, promotions and transfers, plus a statement when a job is commission-based |
| Washington, D.C. | Employers with at least one employee in the District | The minimum and maximum projected salary or hourly pay in all job listings, with healthcare benefits disclosed before the first interview |
| Maryland | All employers (the statute sets no size threshold) | The wage range, set in good faith, and a general description of benefits and other compensation, for positions physically performed at least partly in Maryland |
| Illinois | Employers with 15 or more employees | The pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule |
| Minnesota | Employers with 30 or more employees at one or more Minnesota sites | The starting salary range and a general description of all benefits and other compensation, including health or retirement benefits |
| New Jersey | Employers with 10 or more employees over 20 calendar weeks that do business, employ people or take applications in New Jersey | The hourly wage or salary, or a range, plus a general description of benefits and other compensation programs |
| Vermont | Employers with five or more employees | The compensation or range in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening |
| Massachusetts | Employers with 25 or more employees in Massachusetts | The pay range for the position |
| Virginia | No employer-size threshold | The wage, salary or range in each public and internal posting, set in good faith |
| Maine | Employers with 10 or more employees | The prospective range of pay in the posting; commission-only jobs must say pay is commission-based |
| Connecticut | Every employer with one or more employees | The wages or wage range and a general description of benefits, in internal and public job ads |
The wave is recent.
Colorado's posting rules took effect at the start of 2021, Washington's on January 1, 2023, Illinois' on January 1, 2025, New Jersey's on June 1, 2025, Vermont's on July 1, 2025, Massachusetts' on October 29, 2025, and Connecticut's took effect October 1, 2026.
No effective date is given for the other rows because none was confirmed in official text during research for this guide.
Ask the state labor department, or your employment counsel, whether a law is in force before you rely on it.
Nevada is the contrast case: it is not a posting-range state.
Nevada requires employers to give the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview — after the interview, not in the ad.
Three more places sit outside the table because the research behind this guide could not confirm them.
A Delaware bill (HS 2 for HB 105) would exempt employers with 25 or fewer employees and take effect two years after enactment; its enactment status and effective date were not confirmed for this guide, so check where it stands.
Hawaii is often reported as a pay transparency state, but its posting requirement could not be confirmed in statute text for this guide.
Cities add a layer the research could not verify either: New York City has its own local pay transparency law on top of the state's (not researched here), and the research flagged city and county ordinances, Jersey City among them, as unverified.
If you hire in a city with its own rule, check the local ordinance as well as the state law.
Watch the word internal in a few of these rows.
Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut reach internal postings as well as public ads, and New York's law covers promotions and transfers — so in those states the range obligation follows a job or promotion posted inside the practice, not just a public ad.
What a ‘good-faith’ range means
Three of these laws define what an honest range means closely enough to test yours against.
California defines pay scale as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for a position upon hire.
Massachusetts defines it as the annual salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for the position at that time.
Colorado is the most concrete of the three: a range complies only if it spans the lowest to highest pay the employer actually believes it may offer for the specific job, depending on qualifications, employer finances or other considerations.
Colorado also polices the shape of the range — open-ended postings such as "$30,000 and up" or "up to $60,000" are not allowed.
Elsewhere the requirement is stated more briefly: Maryland requires the wage range in its postings to be set in good faith, and Virginia's statute says the same for each public and internal posting.
For a practice, the test is practical.
Set the bottom of the range at what you would genuinely offer the newest graduate you would consider for the role, and the top at what you would genuinely approve for the experienced candidate you want — the numbers you would actually sign, not a span wide enough to avoid committing.
If you would never approve the top number for this specific job, the range fails the Colorado standard, and the same honesty is what California and Massachusetts ask for.
Our guides to what to pay an associate vet and what to pay a vet tech walk through setting those numbers for an associate veterinarian and for a veterinary technician.
Listing production or ProSal pay legally
ProSal is where these laws get awkward: a base-plus-production offer is not one number, and the statutes speak in wages, ranges, piece rates and commissions.
The states that address production pay directly split into three approaches.
Estimate the commission piece.
California requires that when a position's pay is based on a piece rate or commission, the posting include a good-faith estimate of the piece-rate or commission range the employer reasonably expects to pay upon hire.
Note the asymmetry: California does not require bonuses, tips or benefits beyond the salary or hourly wage to be posted, but a pay component based on piece rate or commission does need the estimate.
Describe it generally.
Colorado takes the lighter touch: the posting needs a pay rate or range plus a general description of other compensation such as bonuses, commissions or tips, and production-based extras may be described generally rather than estimated.
Label the job commission-based.
New York requires a posting to state when a job is commission-based.
Vermont requires an ad for a job paid on commission, in whole or in part, to disclose that fact and does not require a compensation range alongside it.
Maine requires commission-only jobs to say pay is commission-based.
One caution before you pick a wording: these statutes speak in terms of piece rates and commissions, not veterinary production pay, and whether your ProSal formula counts as either for a given state's rule is a question for employment counsel.
What the states above establish is the shape of a compliant posting, not a label you can assume fits.
Putting the approaches together, a ProSal posting built to travel does three things: it lists the base salary range as the range, states that the role pays a percentage of production, and describes the production term the way the state treats it — estimated in California, described generally in Colorado, labeled commission-based in New York and Vermont.
How you set the percentage and write the formula down is its own discipline — the ProSal structuring guide owns that side of it.
Remote and multi-state postings
Where a posting must carry a range is a broader question than where the hospital sits.
Colorado's rule reaches remote job postings performable in Colorado, even if the posting says Coloradans will not be considered.
California's Labor Commissioner interprets its posting rule to apply if the position may ever be filled in California, in person or remotely.
Maryland's statute covers positions physically performed at least partly in Maryland.
Read together, the trigger is where the job can be filled or the work performed, not where the practice is headquartered — a role that could be filled by someone working remotely in a covered state, or that a candidate from anywhere can answer, can put a posting inside a rule the practice never planned for.
Third parties are part of the chain.
California requires third-party posters — a recruiter or a job board — to include the pay scale too, so hand your posting service the exact numbers you publish rather than leaving the listing to them.
Format has its own trap.
Illinois allows a hyperlink to a publicly viewable page with the pay scale and benefits to satisfy its rule; California does not allow a link or QR code in place of the pay scale — it has to be in the posting itself.
The practical default for a practice posting on national boards: include a range in every veterinary posting, not only where you know a law applies.
Once the numbers are settled, the mechanics of the ad itself are in our guide to writing the job posting.
Penalties and enforcement
Four states' penalty provisions are confirmed in the research for this guide, and they price a missing or dishonest range very differently.
The other states' enforcement terms were not verified here, so do not read silence as leniency.
| State | What a violation costs |
|---|---|
| California | Civil penalties of $100 to $10,000 per violation |
| Washington | A prevailing job applicant or employee is entitled to statutory damages of $100 to $5,000 per violation, plus attorneys' fees and costs |
| New Jersey | Up to $300 for a first violation and $600 for each subsequent one; all postings for one opening count as a single violation |
| Virginia | Up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for subsequent ones |
Two details change how the risk actually behaves.
In Washington, a 2025 amendment gives employers a chance to correct a noncompliant posting after written notice before an applicant can sue — for postings from July 27, 2025 through July 27, 2027.
In Virginia, an applicant may sue within one year but must first give the employer 15 business days to fix the posting.
The pattern to plan around differs by state: Washington's remedy and Virginia's one-year suit run through the applicant, which turns a sloppy range into a private claim — and Virginia pairs that private suit with its civil penalties — while the confirmed provisions in California and New Jersey are civil penalties.
Either way the trigger is the posting you already published, so the cheap fix is at the source — a range you actually mean, checked before the ad goes live.
Pay data: how often vet listings show pay
The requirement shows up in the listings.
On October 6, 2026, 78.5% of veterinary job listings on VeterinaryHires stated a pay rate or range — 9,513 of 12,114 active listings.
The split tracks the law: on the same date, 92.6% of veterinary listings in states with a pay-range posting law stated pay, versus 68.2% everywhere else.
It is a listing rate, not an audit of legal compliance, but the gap runs in the direction the requirement points.
The full release — the state-by-state rates and the breakdown by role — is our veterinary pay transparency data.
If you are reworking pay across several postings at once, the veterinary hiring hub collects the rest of the guides in this series.
Before you publish the posting
- Check the employer-size threshold — and whether the law is in force — in every state the role could be filled in
- Build the range from pay you would actually approve for this specific job, floor and ceiling both
- Add the general benefits and other-compensation description where Colorado, Washington, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey or Connecticut requires one
- For a ProSal role, list the base range and treat the production piece the way your state does: estimated in California, described generally in Colorado, labeled commission-based in New York and Vermont
- In California, put the pay scale in the posting itself — no link or QR code — and give the same numbers to any recruiter or board you post through
- In Illinois, a hyperlink to a public pay page satisfies the rule if you would rather maintain one page
- Check internal postings too in Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut, and promotion and transfer postings in New York
- Drop open-ended ranges with no top or bottom