Equal Pay Act Pay Transparency FAQ

The Illinois Equal Pay Act (“IL EPA”) is a law passed in 2003 to ensure that employers who have four or more employees provide equal pay for equal (or substantially equal) work by employees of different sexes within the same county. The law also ensures that workers who are African-American are paid the same as employees of other races for doing the same (or substantially similar) work. 

When an employer is determining what pay and benefits to offer when hiring for a particular position, the employer often has access to information that the applicant does not; this information disparity tends to invisibly allow unequal pay for men and women doing the same work to continue.

The IL EPA attempts to level the playing field a bit by requiring mid-size and large employers to tell applicants at the time a specific job opportunity is published what compensation and benefits the employer will offer for the position (“pay transparency” or “salary transparency”).

The IL EPA also requires transparency in pay opportunities by requiring mid-size and large employers who are seeking external job candidates to let their current employees know about all opportunities for promotion (“promotional opportunity”) so they might apply. 

For any specific job posting for an employment opportunity made after January 1, 2025.

An employer with 15 or more employees that chooses to make a specific job posting for an employment opportunity that is posted after 1/1/2025. 

No. The IL EPA does not require an employer to post any or all job opportunities.  However, if an employer with 15 or more employees chooses to post a specific job opportunity that is covered by the Act, that posting must include pay and benefits information.

Any employees of the employer, whether the employees are inside or outside of Illinois, count for purposes of determining if the employer has 15 employees.

The IL EPA makes no distinction between full-time or part-time employees, or whether employees are subject to a collective bargaining agreement.  

This requirement applies to all notices or publications for a specific employment opportunity that (i) will be physically performed, at least in part, in Illinois or (ii) will be physically performed outside of Illinois, but the employee reports to a supervisor, office, or other work site in Illinois.

This would not apply to a business that posts a “Help Wanted” sign on its physical premises or website, as there is no specific position or job title identified in the posting.

Yes, the pay transparency requirement applies to internal-only job postings as well as those made externally.

    ·       An employer's company-wide email to all employees about a particular position opening, or a physical notice posted in a room for current employees’ break, would constitute a “job posting”.

    ·       However, an employer’s sign on a break-room wall generally encouraging employees to consider applying for promotional opportunities would not constitute a job posting, because it was not for specific opportunities.

Only if the employer had a reason to know or reasonably foresee at the time it made the specific job posting that the work would be done, at least in part, in Illinois, or would report to a supervisor, office, or other work site in Illinois.

No, unless the out-of-state worker will report to or be supervised by an Illinois supervisor, work site, or management. 

A position performed outside Illinois, and not somehow supervised in Illinois, will not become subject to the pay transparency requirement due to the position’s occasional, intermittent, or sporadic visits to or contact with Illinois for work.

Yes. The IL EPA does not contain an exclusion for positions that are temporary in duration, or those subject to a CBA.

The IL EPA requires an employer to provide the “pay scale and benefits" for the position.

This means the anticipated wage or salary, or the wage or salary range, and a general description of the benefits and other compensation, including, but not limited to, bonuses, stock options, or other incentives the employer reasonably expects in good faith to offer for the position. The employer may refer to any applicable internal pay scale, the previously determined pay range for the position, the actual pay range of others currently holding equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount for the position, as applicable, when setting the anticipated wage or salary and benefits for the posted position.

Definitely, so long as it provides a range of hourly wage or salary for the specific position advertised, and for amounts the employer might in good faith pay for that position.

    ·       An acceptable range should include the lowest to the highest pay the employer actually believes it might pay for the particular job, depending on circumstances such as employee qualifications, employer finances, or other operational considerations.

    ·       A range’s bottom and top should not include open-ended phrases like “$40,000 and up” with no top of the range, or “up to $60,000” with no bottom. Similarly, phrases with qualifications such as “pay starts at $50,000 depending on experience” are too vague to provide an applicant with an understanding of what the applicable pay would be.

    ·       If the pay might be different in Illinois and outside Illinois, the range should be what the employer would pay in Illinois.

    ·       If the pay may vary by local area in Illinois, the information should let applicants reasonably estimate their pay. If the employer has one or more sites in Illinois, the posted pay must be included for the site(s) in question.

No, the pay transparency requirement does not depend on how a worker is to be paid. The IL EPA requires specific job postings to include “wage or salary ... and a general description of the...other compensation... the employer reasonably expects in good faith to offer for the position...” 

The employer should indicate what base pay (or possible range) it will provide for the position, how it will be paid (hourly, salary, piece rate) along with the fact that the position is eligible to receive tips, commissions, or bonuses as a facet of compensation, but the employer does not need to include estimated amounts.

The Department intends to provide more guidance and examples in the coming months. For now, employers are encouraged to consider all possible benefits.

While an employer must describe at least the nature of the benefits and what they provide, they do not need to provide specific details, terms and conditions, or dollar values. 

The employer may include a hyperlink to a publicly viewable internet page that includes the pay scale and benefits, so long as it specifies the pay scale and benefits for the particular position in question.

    ·       A general description of benefits that the employer may provide to employees in various positions would not meet the pay transparency requirement.

    ·       An employer with a job posting for a position covered by a CBA may not simply direct applicants to review the CBA for pay and benefit information, because some applicants may not have access to the CBA’s provisions to view that information. 

Yes, an employer may utilize a third party – such as a website that lists job postings from many different employers, an employment agency, or a recruiter – to "announce, post, publish, or otherwise make known” a job opportunity. So long as the employer sought the third party’s assistance, the third party’s posting must include pay scale and benefits information.

The employer must provide the pay scale and benefits information to the third party, and the third party must include the pay scale and benefits information in the posting.

Yes. The IL EPA provides that a third party that the employer engaged may be liable for failure to include the pay scale and benefits information in the posting, unless the third party can show that the employer did not provide the necessary information regarding pay scale and benefits. If a third party publishes an employer’s specific job posting but was not engaged by the employer to do so, the third party can not be held liable under the IL EPA, even if it did not include pay and benefit information. 

Yes. The pay scale and benefits information on the job posting should be provided in good faith. However, nothing in the IL EPA limits an employer to that range when making a job offer. An employer can offer pay and benefits that differ from the anticipated pay scale and benefits information included on a job posting so long as the anticipated pay scale and benefits information was created and disclosed in good faith. For purposes of this Section, when determining whether information was provided in good faith, the Department will consider the specific facts of the situation and may examine employer records. 

There is nothing in the IL EPA that prohibits an employer from doing this. 

Yes.  An employer or employment agency must disclose to an applicant for employment the pay scale and benefits to be offered for the position prior to any offer or discussion of compensation and at the applicant's request, if a public or internal posting for the job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity has not been made available to the applicant. This is true even if the candidate came to the employer via a third party engaged by the employer. 

No. The IL EPA does not require any employer to make any published job posting.

If an employer with 15 or more employees chooses to publish a specific job posting externally (i.e., not just to its existing employees), the employer must announce, post or otherwise make known “all opportunities for promotion” to all its current employees no later than 14 calendar days after making the posting.

    ·       Internal-only job opportunities that are not published externally do not trigger the promotional opportunity requirement.

    ·       If a covered employer decided to fill a vacant position by promoting someone it already employed, and never published an external posting for the position, the employer need not alert its existing employees to the opportunity or promotion.

    ·       This requirement does not apply to State of Illinois job positions that are designated as exempt from competitive selection. 

    ·       When a covered employer posts a “Help Wanted” sign on its window or website, this is a general announcement that does not mention a specific position, not a “specific job posting” that would trigger the promotional opportunity requirement.

No, the IL EPA does not specify how an employer should inform its existing employees about an external specific job posting.

A covered employer can use a variety of formats to notify employees of a job opportunity that it has published externally, but should ensure that the method it uses includes the same information that the job posting did. . The key factor is how the employer regularly communicates work-related information with its employees. This may include methods such as, but not limited to, a bulletin board, email, an intranet site, or a web site, if that method is regularly used by the employer to communicate work-related information to employees, known to employees as the resource for the information’s availability, and able to be regularly accessed by all employees, freely and without interference. The employer should maintain records documenting that communication.

The IL EPA requires an employer with 15 or more employees to make and preserve records that document the name, address, and occupation of each employee, the wages paid to each employee, the pay scale and benefits for each position, and the job posting for each position.

Other examples of records that would likely be important for a covered employer to make and retain include (but are not limited to) those that show:

    ·       that an employer which engaged a third party did include pay and benefit information in the materials the employer provided to the third party;

    ·       when and by what means an employer (directly or via engaged third party) published a specific job posting, whether external or internal-only;

    ·       when and by what means an employer that externally published a specific job posting (directly or via engaged third party) made the promotional opportunity known to its current employees;

    ·       when and how an employer in good faith determined pay/pay range and benefits used in a specific job posting; and

    ·       if the employer ultimately determined to offer different pay and benefits than those in the specific job posting, the good-faith reason for the change.  

An employer subject to any provision of this Act shall preserve those records for a period of not less than 5 years and shall make reports from the records as prescribed by rule or order of the Director, unless the records relate to an ongoing investigation or enforcement action under this Act, in which case the records must be maintained until their destruction is authorized by the Department or by court order.

A person aggrieved by what appears to be an employer’s pay transparency or promotional opportunity violation can bring a department complaint, and can do so anonymously.

Even if the Department has the complainant’s name, while the case is pending at the administrative level, the identity of the complainant may be kept confidential during investigation.  

The Department also may initiate a complaint on its own. 

Complaints must be filed within one year of the date of the alleged violation.   

The Department will: conduct an initial review to assess whether a given complaint falls under the jurisdictional requirements of the IL EPA (here, the pay transparency and/or promotional opportunity requirements); send notification to the employer; conduct an investigation (which may include obtaining documents or other information-gathering); and make a determination as to whether there is reasonable cause to believe there was a violation of the IL EPA’s pay transparency and promotional opportunity requirements.

  The Department may, at its discretion and at any time, attempt to informally resolve a complaint by conference, voluntary mediation, conciliation, or persuasion.  

If the Department determines that there is a violation of pay transparency or promotional opportunity in the job posting, the Department will next determine if the job posting is still active. (See FAQ #32 for more information.)

    ·       If yes, the Department will send to the respondent a notice setting forth the violation, the applicable penalty, and the period to cure the violation.

        o   If the violation is a respondent’s first offense, the Department will give the respondent a cure period of 14 days to remedy the violation.

        o   For a second offense, following a cure period of 7 days to remedy the violation.

        o   For a third offense, there is no cure period.

    ·       If no, the Department will send the employer a notice setting forth the violation and the applicable penalty.

The Department will consider the totality of the circumstances. Factors to be considered include, but are not limited to the following: whether a position has been filled; the length of time a posting has been accessible to the public; the existence of a date range for which a given position is active, and whether the violating posting is for a position for which the employer is no longer accepting applications.

Yes, the Department may impose a financial penalty, and has discretion as to waiving, setting, or imposing a penalty.

    ·       For postings that were still active at the time the Department determined there was a pay transparency or promotional opportunity violation, if an employer failed to cure the violation in the cure period, the penalties may be as follows:

        o   For a first offense, a fine that may not exceed $500;

        o   For a second offense, a fine not to exceed $2,500; and

        o   For a third or subsequent offense, a fine not to exceed $10,000.

    ·       For postings that were no longer active at the time the Department determined there was a pay transparency or promotional opportunity violation:

        o   For a first offense, a fine not to exceed $250;

        o   For a second offense, a fine not to exceed $2,500; and

        o   For a third or subsequent offense, a fine not to exceed $10,000.

    ·       If a respondent has three or more violations, it shall incur automatic penalties without a cure period for active postings for a period of five years; during this period, if the Department finds any further violations, the five-year period will restart.

In determining the amount of a penalty, the Department may consider a number of factors, including (but not limited to) the size of the business of the employer and the gravity of the violation.

Yes. An employer or an employment agency may not refuse to interview, hire, promote, or employ, and or otherwise retaliate against, an applicant or an employee for exercising any rights related to pay transparency and promotional opportunity.