The New York City Council has voted to postpone the enforcement of a new law which would have seen businesses with four or more employees in the city, including architecture firms, of including salary ranges in job advertisements. The law, which was set to take effect from May 15th, will now take effect on November 1st.

The law was originally passed in January, with the goal of closing the gender and race pay gap through encouraging more transparent salary information. However, heavy lobbying by business groups including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs saw the implementation delayed by six months. Lobbyists also sought to exempt companies with fewer than 15 employees from the disclosure, up from the original bill’s threshold of four employees or fewer. However, this amendment was unsuccessful.

Under the new law, which will be enforced by the city’s Commission on Human Rights, employers who fail to disclose salary ranges will receive a warning on their first violation, as well as a 30 day grace period to amend the advert, before facing fines. Firms with repeating violations could face fines of $250,000. However, the law does not allow applicants to sue employers for failing to list the salary range.

The law will also exempt positions that couldn’t or wouldn’t be performed in New York City, in response to the growing number of remote working positions in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new law may have a significant impact on the discourse surrounding salaries and compensation in architecture. At present, there are almost 600 job adverts on Archinect Jobs for positions in New York City, while a 2019 analysis of our ongoing Architecture Salary Poll found that average architecture salaries in New York City were almost 5% higher than the national average.

New York City is the first municipality to introduce salary disclosure law, but measures designed to improve salary transparency already exist on a state-wide level in Colorado, Nevada, Connecticut, California, Washington and Maryland. While California currently requires employers to provide a pay scale upon request from applicants, the state is set to pass a new law that would require employers to include pay and benefit disclosures in job postings, including remote roles.

You can help us in our continued effort to provide salary insights into architectural practice across the USA by anonymously responding to the Architecture Salary Poll here.