Washington pay transparency law: RCW 49.58.110 explained

Washington requires employers with 15 or more employees, counted nationally as long as at least one is based in Washington, to disclose a wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in every job posting for a role a Washington-based person could fill. The rule is RCW 49.58.110, part of the Equal Pay and Opportunities Act, and it was amended again in 2025 to let employers post a single fixed wage instead of a range when that is all that is being offered, and to soften how damages are calculated.

The statute and who enforces it

The posting requirement is RCW 49.58.110, part of the Equal Pay and Opportunities Act (chapter 49.58 RCW). The wage-disclosure duty took effect January 1, 2023. It was amended by SSB 5408 (chapter 383, Laws of 2025), effective July 27, 2025, which changed how damages are calculated and added a temporary cure period. The Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I) enforces the Act and publishes guidance at lni.wa.gov, including an employer's guide and an administrative policy interpreting the posting requirements.

Which employers are covered

The threshold is 15 or more employees. L&I's guidance counts every employee toward that number, including part-time, remote and out-of-state staff, as long as the employer has at least one Washington-based employee. An employer that meets 15 employees nationally, with one person working from Washington, is covered for any posting a Washington-based person could fill, even if the rest of the workforce sits elsewhere.

Coverage follows the worksite, not just the company's headcount. L&I draws a specific line for remote roles: if the position is tied to a worksite located entirely outside Washington, the posting does not need the wage disclosure, even if the ad happens to reach Washington-based applicants. If the role could actually be performed by someone based in Washington, whether hybrid, remote or on-site, the disclosure duty applies.

A practical example: a company headquartered in Texas with 40 employees nationwide, none of them in Washington, posts a fully remote support role open to applicants anywhere in the country. If a Washington-based applicant could take that job and work from home in Washington, the posting needs the wage scale once the company has 15 or more employees total, even though nobody on the existing team lives there yet. The trigger is whether the role could be filled from Washington, not whether it already has been.

What must appear in the posting

A covered posting, defined broadly to include any solicitation done electronically or as a printed hard copy that describes an available position, must include:

• The wage scale or salary range the employer expects to pay, running from the lowest to the highest pay the employer had established for the position before posting it. L&I guidance treats open-ended phrasing like "$60,000 and up" as noncompliant.
• A fixed wage instead of a range, if the employer is only offering a single set amount for the position, including for an internal transfer or promotion. This option was added by the 2025 amendment.
• A general description of all benefits, including health care, retirement, paid leave, parental leave and other tax-reportable fringe benefits offered for the position.
• Other compensation: bonuses, commissions, profit-sharing, stock options or other compensation tied to the role, described in general terms.

A job posting made or accepted indirectly through a third party is treated the same as one the employer posts directly. Any recruiting agency, job board or other intermediary posting on the employer's behalf has to include the same information the employer would have to include itself.

The statute's definition of "posting" is deliberately broad: it covers electronic postings and printed hard copies alike, so a flyer at a career fair or a printed job order handed to a candidate is treated the same as a listing on a careers page or job board. There is no exception for a posting that only reaches a small audience or runs for a short time. If the ad describes an available position and the qualifications expected of an applicant, the wage information has to be there from the first time it is published, not added after the fact once someone asks.

What a candidate or employee may ask for, and when

Washington's disclosure duty for internal transfers and promotions is triggered on request rather than requiring a separate posting for every internal move: an employer with 15 or more employees must provide the wage scale or range for an internal transfer or promotion opportunity to an employee who asks for it. Employers with fewer than 15 employees are not required to provide this information for internal transfers or promotions, though they remain subject to the same posting rule as any other covered employer once they cross the threshold.

Records the employer must keep

RCW 49.58.110 itself does not set out a wage-scale-specific recordkeeping period the way Colorado's or California's statutes do. L&I's guidance focuses on being able to show, if a complaint is filed, what range or fixed wage was actually posted and that it reflected what the employer had established for the role before posting. The practical step is to keep a dated copy of each posting as published, along with the pay scale decision behind it, since an investigation can ask you to reconstruct what an edited or removed posting said at the time it ran.

Penalties and who enforces them

L&I enforces RCW 49.58.110 through a complaint process at [email protected] or the department's own complaint form; anonymous complaints are not investigated. Since the 2025 amendment, damages are discretionary rather than a mandatory flat amount: a court or the department may award statutory damages of $100 to $5,000 per violation, and L&I has said it will generally only assess damages when an applicant can show actual harm from the noncompliant posting. On top of that, the department can pursue administrative civil penalties of up to $500 for a first violation and up to $1,000 for a repeat violation, and courts can award actual damages, statutory damages and attorney's fees in a private lawsuit.

The 2025 amendment also added a cure period that runs through July 27, 2027: an employer that receives written notice of a violation has five business days to correct the posting. If it is corrected within that window, the complaint closes without further action; if not, L&I can move forward with penalties.

A job applicant or employee does not have to go through L&I first to recover damages. RCW 49.58.110 also lets a person bring a private civil action directly, and a court awarding damages in that action can add reasonable attorney's fees and costs on top of the statutory damages, which is part of why employment counsel in Washington treat a missing wage scale as a real exposure even for a single posting rather than a paperwork issue to clean up later.

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

Washington's statute defines a job posting to include recruitment "done directly by an employer or indirectly through a third party," which puts a staffing or recruiting agency's own listing on the same footing as the client's. An agency posting a role for a client that meets the 15-employee threshold, or that could be filled by a Washington-based candidate, needs the wage scale or fixed wage and the benefits description in its own version of the posting, regardless of whether the client's original listing already had it. Because the five-business-day cure window is tied to when notice is received, an agency that gets a complaint about its own posting should treat the clock as running from that moment, not from when it eventually reaches the client, and fix the listing itself rather than waiting on the client to act.

An example compliant posting

The following is an invented example for illustration, not a template pulled from a real listing.

Senior Financial Analyst — Seattle, WA (hybrid, 2 days on-site)
Example Ridgeline Analytics Group (invented company, for illustration only)

Compensation: $92,000–$118,000 annually, based on experience and
scope at hire. This is the full range established for this role.

Benefits: medical, dental and vision coverage; 401(k) with employer
match; 15 days of paid time off in year one; paid parental leave;
commuter benefit.

Other compensation: eligible for an annual bonus of up to 10% of
base salary, based on individual and company performance.

How Washington compares with the rest of this series

Washington is the only state in this series that lets an employer post a single fixed wage instead of a range, and its benefits-disclosure requirement puts it closer to Illinois and Maryland than to California, which requires only the pay scale. 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.