You open a listing and see the salary range: $65,000 to $95,000.
That’s a $30,000 spread, right? But nothing on the page tells you where you’d land in it.
Ranges like this aren’t random. They follow real rules, and once you know what’s driving them, you can read them the way a recruiter does instead of just guessing at the middle number and getting your hopes up.
Why the range is there in the first place
10 years ago, most job postings wouldn’t say anything about pay at all. But now, a growing number of states require it. The rules vary a lot. Some states make disclosure mandatory on every posting, some only require it if a candidate asks, and some still have no requirement at all. Even within a single state, the requirement doesn’t always apply to every employer, since some laws only kick in once a company passes a certain size. The result is that two nearly identical postings can look completely different depending on where the employer sits and how big it is.
Why the range is often so wide
A $30,000 spread looks vague, but under most of the laws in the country, it’s completely legal, and the reason comes straight from how the rules are written. The specifics of who has to disclose what and when vary state by state, but companies must follow pay transparency laws across U.S. states. California’s disclosure requirement, for one, only applies to employers with 15 or more employees, according to the their state’s pay transparency guidance.
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