Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed SB 1558 into law on January 23, 2026. Effective August 1, 2026, Massachusetts employers with 25 or more employees must include salary ranges in all job postings — making Massachusetts the latest in a string of significant pay transparency laws and one of the most consequential given the state's concentration of technology, life sciences, and financial services employers.
What the law requires
SB 1558 requires the following for all job postings by covered employers:
- Salary range: A minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly rate for the position. The range must represent a good-faith estimate of what the employer intends to pay.
- Internal postings: The requirement applies to internal postings for promotions and transfers, not just external hiring postings — following the same approach as Illinois.
- Remote roles: Roles that can be performed remotely by Massachusetts residents are covered, regardless of where the employer is headquartered.
- Salary history ban: Employers may not ask candidates about their previous salary or compensation at any stage of the hiring process — in application forms, during interviews, or through recruiters.
Who is covered: the 25-employee threshold
The 25-employee threshold counts all employees globally. A company with 20 US employees and 8 international employees has 28 total and is covered. The threshold is notably lower than Illinois (15) and higher than New Jersey (10), placing Massachusetts in the middle of the range among active states. For most organisations with any meaningful workforce in Massachusetts, coverage applies.
The law also covers third-party staffing agencies and recruiting firms posting roles on behalf of covered employers. If your agency posts a Massachusetts-accessible role, they need to include the salary range — and your contract with the agency should require their compliance.
The salary history ban: what it means in practice
Massachusetts's salary history ban is one of the broadest in the law. It prohibits asking about: previous base salary, variable compensation (bonuses, commissions, equity), total cash compensation, or any other form of prior compensation. This ban applies to:
- Application form fields requesting salary history
- Recruiter conversations during screening calls
- Interview questions at any stage
- Background check requests that include compensation history
- References that ask about salary history
Candidates may voluntarily disclose their salary history — the law prohibits asking, not receiving unsolicited information. However, employers cannot use voluntarily disclosed information to set compensation below the posted range.
Why August 2026 requires preparation now
The August 2026 effective date may seem distant, but the preparation required to post compliant salary ranges at scale is substantial. The fundamental requirement — include a salary range in every posting — sounds simple. But it presupposes that your organisation has documented salary bands for every role. For most organisations, this work doesn't exist or is incomplete.
Building salary bands requires: job architecture review (defining and documenting all roles and levels), compensation benchmarking against market data, internal equity analysis to ensure bands are defensible, and approval from finance and senior leadership. For a 200-person organisation with 50+ distinct roles, this process typically takes 8–12 weeks when done properly.
Organisations that begin this process in mid-2026 will be scrambling to post compliant ranges by the August 1 deadline. Organisations that begin in Q1 or Q2 2026 will have documented bands, tested ranges, and a compliant posting process in place before enforcement begins.
Massachusetts in the broader pay transparency landscape
Massachusetts joins 14+ US jurisdictions with active pay transparency requirements. For national employers already complying with Colorado and Washington (the most demanding states), Massachusetts SB 1558 adds no new requirements beyond the salary range — Colorado's law already requires salary range + benefits + bonus, which is more than Massachusetts requires. The salary history ban in Massachusetts is consistent with similar bans in California, New York, Colorado, and several other states, so national employers with multi-state salary history ban compliance processes should already be in good shape.
See our 2025 state law roundup for context on the full legislative landscape, and our salary range best practices guide for a compliant posting template.
Annual wage data reporting
SB 1558 includes an additional requirement for larger employers: organisations with 100 or more employees must submit wage data to the Massachusetts Attorney General annually starting in 2027. The reporting framework is modelled on the federal EEO-1 pay data collection — which was suspended at the federal level in 2021 — and requires compensation data broken down by race, gender, and job category. This requirement is separate from and in addition to the job posting salary range requirement, and it has significant data infrastructure implications for affected employers.
