Report: Workers still don’t believe companies are committed to pay equity

In recent years, pay transparency has grown increasingly common as many states have passed legislation to help arm workers with more data as they enter into salary negotiations. Across 14 states and many more localities, employers are now required to either provide explicit salary ranges in job postings or share that information during the hiring process. That means some of the biggest employers in the country now have to disclose compensation data in states like California and New York.

But according to a new report from compensation platform Beqom, despite all this progress, many workers still feel like pay transparency isn’t within reach and that they have little insight into how their compensation is being determined. Of the nearly 2,000 people surveyed, which included workers in both the U.S. and U.K., only 38% said they understood how their compensation was calculated. Over half of respondents also said they believed their performance reviews were subjective, which in turn could impact their compensation.

When it comes to pay equity and transparency, many workers said that their employers did not adequately report data on pay disparities: Nearly 60% of U.S. employees said their company did not disclose information on gender-based pay gaps. More than half of workers also believed that their employer was not taking meaningful steps to address those pay gaps.

Inflation also continues to be a major concern: Just 40% of respondents in the U.S. said their salaries were adjusted to match inflation in 2024. Wage stagnation was also a source of frustration for all respondents: Almost half of them said their pay had not increased in the last year and cited it as a top concern, alongside a lack of pay transparency.

The findings on pay equity also underscore just how halting progress has been on combatting the gender pay gap. While pay transparency laws were intended to help mitigate pay gaps on the basis of race and gender, the data indicates that there has been limited movement on a broader scale: In fact, the gender pay gap actually increased in 2023 for the first time in 20 years, with women earning 83 cents on the dollar compared to men. While wages actually increased overall, men benefitted more than women did.

Even as the gap has narrowed over the years, experts have also said it’s unlikely that the gap will disappear altogether due to a combination of factors, from fluctuations in the workforce to the motherhood penalty. But employers do have a role to play in helping women and other underrepresented employees reach parity in the workplace, from conducting pay equity audits to embracing pay transparency whether or not it’s mandated by law—and making sure they demonstrate a commitment to addressing those issues.