New York pay transparency law: state rule and the NYC overlay

New York requires employers with four or more employees, including employment agencies and recruiters, to state a compensation range in every posting for a job, promotion or transfer that will be performed at least in part in the state. The rule is Labor Law section 194-b, in effect since September 17, 2023. If the role touches New York City, a second, separately enforced city law applies on top of it, and the two overlap enough that a recruiter posting a hybrid New York City role effectively has to satisfy both at once.

The statute and who enforces it

The state requirement is New York Labor Law section 194-b, added in 2022 and in effect since September 17, 2023. The New York State Department of Labor publishes its own plain-language summary at dol.ny.gov/pay-transparency. The Commissioner of Labor investigates complaints and prosecutes violations under the civil penalty schedule tied to the section; the New York State Division of Human Rights handles complaints that also involve discrimination.

Inside New York City, a second law applies: the city's Human Rights Law was amended by Local Laws 32 and 59 of 2022, effective November 1, 2022, to require a good-faith salary range in job advertisements. The New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) enforces that version, separately from the state Department of Labor, and its penalty structure is different from the state's, covered below.

Which employers are covered

The state law covers employers with four or more employees. The statute's definition of "employer" for this section explicitly includes any person or entity "acting as an employment agent or recruiter, or otherwise connecting applicants with employers," which pulls in third-party recruiters and employment agencies directly. There is one specific carve-out: the definition of employer for section 194-b excludes a temporary help firm, a term defined elsewhere in the Labor Law (section 916, subdivision 5) as a business that recruits and hires its own employees and assigns them to perform work at other organizations to supplement that organization's workforce. In practice, a firm that places its own W-2 temps on assignment is not itself an "employer" required to post a range under 194-b for those assignments, while a search firm, contingency recruiter or agency that connects a candidate directly with a client's own payroll is covered.

The city law's employer threshold is also four or more employees, but counted without the "employment agency" carve-out logic built into the state statute; the city ordinance reaches any employer advertising a job that will be performed, in whole or part, in New York City, including remote postings tied to a New York City office.

What must appear in the posting

Under 194-b, a covered posting must include:

• The compensation or a range of compensation — the minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly wage the employer believes, in good faith, to be accurate at the time of posting.
• The job description, if one exists for the role. If there is no written job description, the statute does not require the employer to create one for this purpose.
• Commission-based roles may satisfy the compensation requirement with a general statement that "compensation shall be based on commission," rather than a dollar figure.

New York's 2026 guidance tightened what counts as a good-faith range: a placeholder like "$1 to $1,000,000" fails the standard on its face, the same position the New York Department of Labor and several other states in this series have taken. A range needs to reflect what the employer would actually pay a qualified candidate for that specific role, not the theoretical bounds of the pay structure.

New York does not require a benefits description in the state posting the way Washington, Illinois or Maryland do. The New York City ordinance likewise focuses on the salary range rather than benefits.

The New York City overlay

A posting for a role performed at least in part in New York City needs to satisfy the city's own good-faith salary range requirement in addition to the state's. The two rules are close enough in substance, both call for a minimum and maximum tied to what the employer actually expects to pay, that a single compliant range generally covers both. The practical difference for a recruiter is procedural: a complaint about a city-based posting can go to either the state Department of Labor or the city's Commission on Human Rights, and the two agencies calculate penalties differently, so a New York City posting error carries two separate points of exposure rather than one.

What a candidate or employee may ask for, and when

Because 194-b requires the range in the posting itself rather than on request, a New York applicant's main practical right is to see the range before applying, not to request it separately. The anti-retaliation provision in the statute protects an applicant or current employee from being refused an interview, hire, promotion or continued employment, or otherwise retaliated against, for exercising rights under the section, which includes raising a concern that a posting is missing the required range. New York does not pair 194-b with a statewide salary history ban the way some other states in this series do; check local ordinances separately if salary history questions come up.

Records the employer must keep

Section 194-b itself does not spell out a specific document-retention period the way California's or Colorado's statutes do. The safer practice, and the one most New York employment counsel recommend, is to keep a copy of each posting as it was published, along with the compensation range and job description used to build it, for as long as you would keep other hiring records for that requisition, since an investigation can ask you to reconstruct what a since-edited or expired posting said at the time.

Penalties and who enforces them

Because a proof-of-cure submission under the city process counts as an admission of liability for later purposes, correcting a first city complaint quietly and quickly is not a free pass to treat the requirement casually on future postings.

What it means for a staffing agency posting a client's role

The temporary help firm carve-out is the detail agencies in New York most often get wrong in either direction. If you are a true temporary staffing firm, meaning you hire the worker onto your own payroll and assign them to a client's site, section 194-b's employer definition does not reach that assignment posting. But the moment your business model shifts to direct placement, contingency search, retained search or any arrangement where the candidate ends up on the client's own payroll rather than yours, you are an "employment agency" or "recruiter" under the statute's employer definition and the posting needs a range, exactly as if the client posted it themselves. Many agencies run both models under one roof. The safest approach is to make the range a required field on every requisition intake regardless of which side of that line a specific placement falls on, since guessing wrong exposes the agency, not just the client, to a Department of Labor complaint. Any role that could be filled from New York City needs the city-law range as well, even if the client's office sits elsewhere in the state or out of state entirely.

A posting checklist for New York

NEW YORK JOB POSTING — 194-B AND NYC CHECKLIST

[ ] Employer (or agency, if not a true temporary help firm under LAB 916(5))
    has 4+ employees
[ ] Role will be performed at least in part in New York, OR is remote and
    reports to a New York supervisor, office or worksite
[ ] Posting states a minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly range,
    believed accurate in good faith at the time of posting
[ ] Range is not a placeholder (e.g., not "$1 to $1,000,000")
[ ] Job description included in the posting if one exists
[ ] Commission-only roles state that compensation is commission-based
[ ] If the role touches New York City, the posting also satisfies the NYC
    Human Rights Law good-faith range requirement
[ ] A copy of the posting as published is saved, with the range and any job
    description used to build it
[ ] If this is a staffing placement: confirmed whether the worker will be on
    the agency's payroll (temporary help firm, not covered) or the client's
    payroll (employment agency/recruiter, covered)

New York's four-employee threshold is the lowest headcount trigger among the states covered in this series, and its temporary-help-firm carve-out is unusual: Illinois and Colorado both extend the posting duty to employment agencies with no comparable exemption. For the full state-by-state comparison, see pay transparency laws by state. For phrasing that asks about pay expectations without crossing into a history question, see salary expectation questions, and for the broader list of topics to avoid in an interview, see illegal interview questions.