Georgia pay transparency law: no state rule, and when a Georgia posting still needs a range

Georgia has no statewide pay transparency law for private employers, as of October 2026. No Georgia statute requires a salary range in a job posting, on request or after an interview, and Georgia does not appear among the states that require pay disclosure in our state-by-state tracker. The Georgia Department of Labor's employer FAQs answer pay questions with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and mention no posting duty. What can still put a range in a Georgia ad is another state's law: a remote role open to people in a posting state, or a hire who reports into one.

Does Georgia require salary ranges in job postings?

No. A Georgia employer may advertise a job with no pay at all, a single rate, a "starting at" figure or a full range. Georgia also has no salary history ban for private employers, which our Georgia salary history page covers along with Atlanta's rule for city jobs. Neither rule exists at the state level, and no bill creating either became law in the 2025 or 2026 sessions. Any new proposal would have to be filed in a later session; you can follow filings on the General Assembly's legislation page.

When does a Georgia job posting still need a range?

Pay transparency statutes generally attach to where the job is performed or where it reports, not to where the employer is based. For a Georgia employer, that produces three situations:

The reporting test is the one Georgia employers miss. New York's statute covers a job "performed outside of New York but reports to a supervisor, office, or other work site in New York" (Labor Law § 194-b). An Atlanta-based account manager on a team run from Manhattan is in a New York-covered job. The full set of tests is on pay transparency for remote jobs.

The geography helps Georgia employers more than most. None of Georgia's neighbors, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina, is among the posting states in our tracker, so a role limited to the Southeast usually needs no range. See the Florida and North Carolina guides for the two largest.

What about staffing agencies and recruiters in Georgia?

Atlanta is a staffing hub, and agencies there often write ads for clients in other states. Several posting laws reach the agency directly. Washington's statute counts recruitment "done directly by an employer or indirectly through a third party" as a posting (RCW 49.58.110), and Ohio's city rules in Cleveland and Columbus name employment agencies acting for a covered employer (see the Ohio guide). The practical rule is the same either way: get the client's range and its location rules at intake, before the ad runs. Our pay transparency for staffing agencies guide has an intake checklist, and staffing agency licensing in Georgia covers the state's own agency rules.

Does federal law require pay ranges for Georgia employers?

No federal statute requires a private employer to publish pay in an ad. Georgia has many federal contractors, and one federal change matters to them:

• The contractor pay transparency provision is gone. It barred contractors from retaliating against workers who discussed pay; it never required ranges in ads. It was part of the Executive Order 11246 regulations. Executive Order 14173 revoked that order on January 21, 2025, and the Department of Labor's final rule, published August 21, 2026, removed the regulations, including the pay transparency provisions at 41 CFR 60-1.35, effective October 26, 2026. What remains for contractors is covered in job posting requirements for federal contractors.
• Pay discussions are still protected. The National Labor Relations Board says the National Labor Relations Act protects most private-sector employees who discuss wages with coworkers, and that rules forbidding it are unlawful.
• Equal pay rules apply. The EEOC explains that the Equal Pay Act covers virtually all employers and that Title VII separately bars pay discrimination.

What do job boards do with pay?

Indeed's employer help article lets a job show pay as a fixed amount, a range, a starting amount or a maximum, and displays it in search results and on the job page. Google's job posting structured data treats baseSalary, "the actual base salary for the job, as provided by the employer (not an estimate)," as a recommended property. For a Georgia-only role any format is lawful. For a remote role, "Up to" or "From" will not satisfy a state that requires a minimum and a maximum, so use a real range.

What should a Georgia recruiter say about pay on the first call?

With no state rule, the first call is where pay disclosure actually happens in Georgia, and it is also where most equal pay risk starts. The order matters: give the range, then ask what the candidate is looking for, and do not ask what they earn now. An example of wording that works (example figures):

"Before we go further, the range for this role is $58,000 to $66,000,
plus the standard benefits package. Where you land in that depends on
experience with the systems we covered. Does that range work for you,
and what are you looking for?"

If the candidate volunteers a current salary, note the expectation they give, not the current figure. Georgia allows the question, but a file that shows the offer was set from prior pay is what an Equal Pay Act claim looks for. More wording is in salary expectation questions.

How should a Georgia employer set and use a range?

1. Decide the hiring geography at intake. "Atlanta office, hybrid" and "remote, US" are different legal postings.
2. Name the reporting line. If the manager sits in a reporting-test state, treat the role as covered there.
3. Build the range from evidence: the budget, a pay band or what current staff in the role earn. Example only: "$58,000 to $66,000 for the Atlanta office; $64,000 to $73,000 for New York-based hires." See how to set salary ranges for job postings.
4. Say the range on the first call and ask about expectations, not current pay.
5. Remove pay-secrecy language from handbooks and offer letters.
6. Recheck each year. A Georgia law would start with a bill in a new session, and the states your remote hires live in can change their rules at any time.

Georgia at a glance

More Georgia rules: hiring employees in Georgia and background check laws in Georgia.