Does Philadelphia Require Salary Ranges in Job Postings? No. Here Is What Actually Applies.

The claim and why it is wrong

If you searched for “Philadelphia pay transparency law,” you probably found a state-by-state chart that lists Philadelphia among the places that require salary ranges in job postings. At least one national compliance tracker makes this claim. It is not correct.

One example is Loio’s Pay Transparency Laws by State: 2026 Tracker, marked updated July 24, 2026. As of October 19, 2026, it says Philadelphia requires salary ranges in job postings and cites “Ord. 220903.” City Council’s record for file 220903 is an October 2022 message from the Mayor about Planning Commission recommendations, not an ordinance.

The City’s own Wage Equity Ordinance page, published by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR), describes one rule: a salary history ban. It says nothing about posting pay ranges. The FAQs on the same page cover what you may and may not ask a candidate about past pay. They do not mention job ads or disclosure at offer. Salary ranges come up only in a list of best practices, which the FAQs call suggestions, not requirements.

Pennsylvania has no statewide posting requirement either. Bills have been introduced in Harrisburg, and we cover them below, but none has become law. One of them, HB 630, passed the state House in May 2025 and would require ranges in public job ads. It has sat in a Senate committee since.

The confusion is understandable. Pay transparency laws have spread quickly across states and cities, and trackers that summarize dozens of jurisdictions sometimes blur “salary history ban” into “pay transparency law.” The two are different. A salary history ban limits what you can ask. A pay transparency law requires what you must disclose.

What the Philadelphia salary history ban actually requires

Philadelphia’s Wage Equity Ordinance is Section 9-1131 of the Philadelphia Code, part of the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance (Chapter 9-1100). PCHR, the agency that enforces the city’s anti-discrimination laws, began enforcing it on September 1, 2020.

The rule is short. You may not ask a job applicant about their past pay, and you may not rely on past pay to set their compensation. The City’s page frames it as two duties: do not ask, and do not use.

The ban reaches direct questions on applications and in interviews. The FAQs on the City’s page walk through common situations, including how to handle outside recruiters and what to do when a candidate brings up past pay on their own. Read them before you rely on a figure a candidate offered without being asked.

What you can do is ask a candidate what they expect to earn. You can also state your budget or range for the role and ask whether it works for them. The ordinance restricts questions about the past, not conversations about the future.

PCHR handles complaints and can order remedies against employers that violate the ordinance. The agency also publishes a Wage Equity Ordinance poster, and you need to post it where applicants and employees can see it. Section 9-1103(1)(i) of the Philadelphia Code makes it unlawful for an employer covered by the Wage Equity Ordinance to fail to post the fair practices notices PCHR designates.

Where Pennsylvania HB 560, HB 630, and SB 889 stand

Pennsylvania House Bill 560 was introduced on February 12, 2025. It is one of the state’s pending pay transparency bills. The bill text on the General Assembly’s website shows what it would do if it became law.

HB 560 would apply to employers with 15 or more employees. Covered employers would have to give the pay range, and the factors used to set it, to applicants for a posted job and to employees seeking a transfer or promotion. They would also have to give each employee the range for their job in writing at hire and once a year. The bill text does not say the range must appear in the job posting itself.

Do not lean on that last point too hard. The sponsor’s memo for HB 560 is titled “Pay Range Disclosures on Job Postings,” and a second bill goes further. HB 630, from Representative Melissa Shusterman, passed the state House 102 to 101 on May 5, 2025. It would require employers to include the expected pay or pay range for any job they advertise publicly, and to give it to an applicant who asks. It has sat in the Senate Labor and Industry Committee since May 16, 2025. If someone tells you Pennsylvania requires ranges in postings today, they are wrong. No such bill has become law.

SB 889, from Senator Steven Santarsiero, is sometimes listed as a pay transparency bill, but it is not a companion to HB 560. It would update the state’s Equal Pay Law and add a statewide salary history ban. It has no pay range rule. None of the three bills has become law. Bills in Pennsylvania often sit for a full session without a vote, so a bill being “introduced” tells you little about whether it will become law.

What should you do with a pending bill? Watch it, and get ready in a low-cost way. If HB 560 passed as written, you would need a written pay range for every role and a process for sharing it with applicants, at hire, and once a year. Building those ranges now is useful even if the bill never moves, for reasons we cover below.

The one Philadelphia posting rule that is real: Ban the Box language

Philadelphia does have a rule about what your job ads must say. It is not about pay. It comes from the city’s Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards ordinance, better known as Ban the Box, which limits how and when employers can consider criminal records.

City Council amended and expanded the ordinance, and the changes took effect on January 6, 2026. Under the amended ordinance, if a job ad for a Philadelphia position says you will run a criminal background check, it must also state that any consideration of the check will be an individualized assessment. An individualized assessment means you look at the specific record, the specific job, and the specific person before deciding, rather than applying a blanket rule.

So the honest answer to “what does Philadelphia require in a job posting” is this: if the posting mentions a background check, a statement about how you handle criminal records. Never a salary range. Our article on the Philadelphia Ban the Box 2026 amendments explains the notice language and the rest of the amended rule.

If you update your job ad template for one thing this year, make it that sentence.

New Jersey’s posting law and why it matters to cross-river employers

New Jersey’s pay transparency law took effect on June 1, 2025. It requires covered employers to include pay information in job postings. If your company is in Philadelphia but you hire in Camden, Cherry Hill, or anywhere else in South Jersey, this is the posting law you need to read.

Greater Philadelphia companies cross the river all the time. You might have an office in New Jersey, remote employees who live there, or a job that could be filled from either side. In each case, New Jersey’s law may reach your posting, and Pennsylvania’s lack of a law does not protect you.

We are not summarizing New Jersey’s coverage rules or penalties here, because this piece is about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. The point is simpler. If you assume “no law in Philadelphia” means “no law for us,” and you post New Jersey jobs, you are exposed.

Check the New Jersey Department of Labor’s guidance, or ask counsel, before you post a New Jersey role without a range.

Should you post ranges anyway? The practical case

Nothing in Philadelphia or Pennsylvania law requires you to post ranges. So why do many local employers do it?

The first reason is that your candidates are already seeing ranges everywhere else. Job boards show them. Employers in New Jersey and other states with posting laws show them. A posting without a range now stands out, and candidates read the silence as a signal, often a negative one.

The second reason is efficiency. A posted range filters out candidates who would never accept your offer and draws in candidates who would. You spend fewer interview hours discovering a mismatch on pay that both sides could have seen on day one.

The third reason is the salary history ban itself. Once you cannot ask what someone made before, your own range becomes the anchor for the conversation. If you have to state it at offer anyway, stating it in the posting costs you very little more.

The fourth reason is that a pending bill can become law. HB 560 would require ranges for applicants, at hire, and annually, and HB 630 would put them in your job ads. If you already have ranges you are comfortable publishing, either bill becomes a formality rather than a project.

There are real reasons not to post ranges, too. Some companies pay differently across locations and do not want to publish a wide band. Others worry about current employees comparing their pay to a new posting. Those are legitimate concerns, and the answer is usually to fix internal pay equity first, then post.

For a broader look at how employers with locations in more than one state handle this, see RX2’s Pay Transparency Is the New Normal: What Multi-State Employers Do Now.

Whatever you decide about postings, the rules that do apply in Philadelphia are clear: do not ask about past pay, and if your ad mentions a background check, say how you handle criminal records.

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