The worker revolution is one step closer to becoming reality.
Silicone Valley has long been considered the major tech hub of the U.S. The Bay Area has forever been transformed due to the emergence of the tech industry and the talent the industry attracts.
That talent is expensive.
The average base salary in San Francisco is $103,000 per year, according to Payscale.com. For comparison, the average salary in the U.S. in 2022 is $53,490 per year based on a 40-hour work week, according to Jobted.
The extra cash is necessary to live in a place like the Bay.
The cost of living in San Francisco is 80% higher than the national average, according to Payscale, with housing costing 231% more in the city than the U.S. average.
Good thing the tech industry, along with many other industries, is seeing record compensation. In 2021, a major need for technology professionals drove the average salary for technologists in the U.S. to a record high of $104,566 per year, according to SHRM, according to the Dice Tech Salary Report.
The shutdown during the covid-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented shift in the U.S. labor market. Between spring 2021 and the end of 2022, 33 million Americans quit their jobs.
More than 60% of of those who resigned said they did so because the pay was too low, according to a Pew Research survey.
To entice people back into the workforce, employers have begun raising salaries. And to attract people to certain areas at a time where working remote gives employees more freedom than they've enjoyed in generations, certain areas want to make salary information public.
Salary Disclosure Laws Coming to Tech Hubs
Starting May 15, 2022, employers in New York City must begin listing salary ranges in any advertisements for jobs, promotions, or transfer opportunities.
In Washington, a bill signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee that goes into effect January 1, 2023 will also require companies in the state with more than 15 employees to disclose a salary range and benefit information in job listings.
This could be a game changer for the tech industry where, according to GeekWire, it is not uncommon for job applicants to go through several rounds of interviews before they find out about the potential compensation package for the job.
It could also serve to entice tech workers to choose places outside of Silicon Valley to pursue their careers.
These new changes will benefit workers by giving them the ammunition they need to get fair compensation for their labor.
“If people don’t know what others in their organization get paid for doing the sort of work they do, they won’t have an opportunity to call out unjust pay disparities,” Jeff Moriarty, executive director of the Hoffman Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University told Fast Company.
"Knowing what people get paid is good for employees who are discriminated against, as well as for companies themselves.”
States like Colorado, Connecticut, and Maryland are also enacting similar laws in a trend that could become nationwide.
New York also recently enacted a law that bans all employers, public and private, for asking prospective or current employees about their salary history and compensation. It also bans businesses from seeking similar information from other sources.
