Equal Pay Act Pay Transparency FAQ

The Illinois Equal Pay Act (“IL EPA”) is a law passed in 2003 to ensure that employers 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 jobseekers 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 employment or pay opportunity (“Promotional Opportunity”) by requiring mid-size and large employers who are seeking external job candidates to timely let their current employees know about all employment opportunities announced, posted, published, or otherwise made known in writing by the employer or a third party the employer has engaged to act on its behalf. The employer must let its employees know of the newly-published opportunity within 14 calendar days.

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

An employer with 15 or more employees that chooses to make or republish after 1/1/2025 a specific job posting for an employment opportunity to be physically performed in Illinois, or performed elsewhere but reporting to an office, work site, or supervisor in Illinois.

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, seasonal, student, or “as needed” workers, 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, Pay Transparency applies to an employer’s internal-only job posting as well as it does to externally-published job postings. If an employer sends a company-wide email to all employees, posts a physical notice on the premises, or posts information on a company intranet about a particular employment opportunity or position opening, each of those would constitute a “job posting” that requires Pay Transparency. However, an employer that shares a communication or message with its employees generally encouraging them to consider applying for internal openings would not constitute a job posting because it does not reference a specific job opportunity.

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 specific job postings to include the “pay scale” for the posted position. 820 ILCS 112/10(b-25).

The IL EPA rule clarifies that the “pay scale and benefits” means the posted position’s wage or salary, or wage or salary range, and a general description of benefits and other compensation, including but not limited to anticipated or possible bonuses, stock options, or other incentives the employer reasonably expects in good faith to offer for a position, set by reference to any applicable pay scale, the previously determined range for the position, the actual range of others currently holding equivalent positions, any compensation model relied on by the employer or the budgeted amount for the position, as applicable. 56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.120.

For Pay Transparency and Promotional Opportunity purposes, “wage” means the hourly base wage rate, salary, overtime pay, premium pay, expected bonuses, and commissions.  56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.120. 

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.

A pay range that is extremely broad may raise questions about IL EPA compliance. The Department encourages employers to make and preserve records related to the reasons for a pay range’s breadth. 

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 IL EPA requires specific job postings to include general information about all employment benefits the employer is offering to provide or make available to a person hired into a particular position. 820 ILCS 112/10(b-25).

The IL EPA rule clarifies that “benefits” for the purposes of Pay Transparency and Promotional Opportunity includes for the posted position “all employment benefits an employer is offering to provide or make available to a person hired into a position, including health care benefits, retirement benefits, any benefits permitting paid time off (including sick leave, parental leave, and paid time off or vacation benefits), any benefits permitting job-protected time off, and any other benefits that must be reported for federal tax purposes. 56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.120.

While the job posting must describe at least the nature of the benefits and what they provide, it does not need to include specific details, terms and conditions, or dollar values. Minor privileges incidental to the position’s regular salary or wages also need not be included.

The job posting must include, or provide by one hyperlink click, those benefits associated with the specific position posted.

An employer, or by a third party engaged by an employer to make a job posting known, may in a job posting reference pay scale or benefit information for the posted position by including a hyperlink to another publicly viewable internet page that includes the pay scale or benefits, so long as the linked page shows the jobseeker what key benefits (health insurance, paid or job-protected time off, retirement savings) will be provided or available to the holder of the actual position in the job posting.

If the hyperlink in the job posting takes a jobseeker to another internet page that contains a general description of benefits that the employer may provide to some employees in various positions, that would not meet the Pay Transparency requirements; the same is true if the hyperlink takes a jobseeker to a general benefits page that requires a jobseeker to click into other links for more detailed information. Similarly, a job posting for a position covered by a collective bargaining agreement does not meet Pay Transparency requirements by simply including referring jobseekers to the collective bargaining agreement itself (or even including a hyperlink to the collective bargaining agreement), as jobseekers cannot be expected to parse through lengthy, complex legal documents to get benefit or pay information that may apply to the posted position. 

            Yes, an employer may use a third party – such as a website, job board, application, aggregator, or service 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. 820 ILCS 112/10(b-25).

            If the employer “engaged” the third party related to a job opportunity, the third party must make the position’s pay and benefits known. The IL EPA regulation provides that “engage” means "activity between an employer and a third party in which the employer and the third party communicate regarding one or more job postings, that the employer has consented to be announced, posted, published, shared or otherwise made known by the third party.”

56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.120. This includes recruiter activity to make a job posting known as well as traditional publication of job postings. 

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. An employer’s “engagement” of a third party for job posting purposes does not necessarily require that the employer pay the third party to act on the employer’s behalf. 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.    

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 on its own or via a third party, 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 employer’s method of making Promotional Opportunities must ensure that all employees simultaneously have the information available. For example, if an employer typically uses email or an intranet to provide Promotional Opportunity notice but some employees of a company do not regularly use computers, the employer must ensure that those employees receive timely notice in another fashion. The same is true if an employer typically uses physical postings onsite at its premises; if some employees regularly work at home or a hybrid schedule, the employer must ensure that those employees receive timely notice in another way.

If an employer has not advised its employees about how it will communicate Promotional Opportunities, the employer should do so. 

Related to job postings, the IL EPA requires all employers to make and preserve records that document the pay scale and benefits for each position, and the job posting for each position. 820 ILCS 112/20. The IL EPA regulation further requires that all employers preserve records made in the regular course of business related to employee qualifications for hire and job descriptions. 56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.140(a).

For job postings made by or on behalf of employers with 15 or more employees, the employer should retain a visual representation of what the posting looked like when it was published, made by the employer, the employer’s agent, or a third party engaged by the employer. When such a job posting for a covered employer was externally made, the employer should retain a visual representation of what the posting looked like when published; if the employer engaged a third party to make the job posting known, the employer should retain records of such announcements.  56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.140(c).

While the IL EPA does not proscribe the format an employer must use to make and preserve records regarding Pay Transparency and Promotional Opportunity, IDOL encourages employers to consider how they can most efficiently show that a specific job posting – or many of its postings – contained pay scale and benefits information. In the event that IDOL receives a complaint about a job posting from a jobseeker, IDOL may ask the employer to demonstrate that a particular posting – or all its postings, including those announced, made known, or published by a third party – contained pay scale and benefit information.

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 did include pay and benefit information in a job posting provided to a third party; when and by what means an employer (directly or via engaged third party) published a specific job posting; when and how an employer in good faith determined pay/pay range and benefits used in a specific job posting; the good-faith reason an employer offered pay differing from that in its specific job posting; and the method by which an employer provided pay and benefit information to an applicant who did not have a job posting requested that information. Particularly with regard to job postings that a third party announced, published, or made known, it is key for employers to maintain records of what they transmitted to the third party and when, and what the third party announced, published or made known and when. Since the IL EPA imposes recordkeeping duties on an employer, but not on a third party acting on the employer’s behalf, the employer’s recordkeeping about the third party and Pay Transparency is vital.

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.

Under an IDOL policy effective 1/1/2026, an anonymous Pay Transparency complaint may be treated as a report to IDOL, which IDOL may investigate pursuant to 820 ILCS 112/15(c).

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.   

When the Department receives an anonymous report or signed complaint about Pay Transparency or Promotional Opportunity, the Department first assesses whether it has jurisdiction to proceed; this involves determining if the report or complaint was timely filed, relates to a job posting by/for an employer with 15+ employees, and relates to a specific job posting for work to be physically performed in Illinois (or for work performed elsewhere but reporting to a work site, supervisor, or office in Illinois). Due to the volume of Pay Transparency matters, the Department will check to see if the party named as responsible in the report/complaint has previously been named in a Pay Transparency matter; if not, and if the report was filed anonymously, the Department will put the report into “hold” status until such time as a second report or complaint is filed against the same entity. If the Department determines that there is no jurisdiction to proceed under the IL EPA (such as when a job posting is for a fully-remote position with no connection to Illinois, or a respondent employer has fewer than 15 employees), the agency sends a copy of the dismissal to the complainant and to the respondent (the employer or other party named as responsible by the person who filed the complaint) without identifying the person who filed it.

The Department’s usual approach to Pay Transparency reports is to send a letter to the respondent offering an informal, collaborative approach to addressing existing reports or complaints against the respondent altogether, with the intent to bring the respondent entity into Pay Transparency compliance. When an entity takes advantage of this option, matters typically are dismissed without any determination as to whether the IL EPA was violated. This informal approach is not used with Promotional Opportunity reports or complaints, due to what generally is an ongoing relationship between the filer of the report or complaint and the respondent.

If the Department later receives new reports or complaints about a respondent that already used the informal resolution approach, or a report/complaint about Promotional Opportunity and/or retaliation, the Department will notify the respondent of the investigation, provide the complaint(s) or report(s), and send record requests that seek detailed records related to each Illinois job posting going back to a certain point in time; the notice and record request explain that the Department is looking into all aspects of the respondent’s Pay Transparency and Promotional Opportunity practices, not just those referenced in the report/ complaint. After reviewing the respondent’s records, the Department may ask seek additional records, discuss options with the respondent, or take other action; if a respondent does not answer the complaint or record request, typically the Department will send it notice that if it does not respond the Department may issue either a subpoena or a determination finding that the respondent violated the IL EPA. In all cases, the Department issues a written determination about the allegations, and sends it to all parties or their representatives. If either party wants to confer with the Department about the determination, the party can request a conference in writing within time provided on the determination or dismissal form.

Due to limited Department resources, the IL EPA administrative process is not a quick one, and there may be significant periods of time in which a complainant or respondent does not hear from the assigned staffer.

When the Department has worked successfully with a respondent to informally resolve a Pay Transparency concern, the Department typically issues a dismissal concluding that there was no IL EPA violation.

In all other instances, if the  Department determines that a respondent has violated the IL EPA job posting requirements, the Department will issue a written determination setting forth the details, allegations, and findings related to the matter(s). Each determination will identify the IL EPA violation(s), whether the job postings at issue are “active” or not, whether it is the respondent’s first, second or third “offense”, and if the respondent will have any opportunity to cure the violation(s).

Whether a job posting violation is “active” or “inactive” and whether a respondent has an opportunity to cure the violations are addressed in the EPA rule at 56 Ill. Adm. Code Sections 320.240 and 320.260. In summary, if there are “active” job postings that violate the IL EPA at the time the Department issues its determination, the respondent will have time to cure the violations or pay a penalty. For a “first offense”, the respondent will have 14 days to cure all violative postings, and for a “second offense”, a respondent will have seven days to cure all violative postings; for a “third” or subsequent offense, there is no cure period.  

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. The penalties possible related to job postings can be found in the IL EPA statute at 820 ILCS 112/30(c-10) and (c-15), and in the IL EPA rule at 56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.260.

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 appropriateness of a penalty, the Department will consider the size of the business of the employer and the gravity of the violation, and may consider other facts including but not limited to the employer's history of previous violations, and (if applicable) the number of employees affected. 56 Ill. Adm. Code Section 320.260(e).

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.

The online interactive complaint for Pay Transparency requires – among other things - that a filer choose at least one of nine possible allegations:

Check the box(es) to indicate reason(s) for filing this Complaint.

     o   I am reporting a job posting that did not include the position’s wage or salary (or compensation).

     o   I am reporting a job posting that included an overly broad or unspecific wage or salary range (or compensation) for the position.

     o   I am reporting a job posting that did not include a general description of benefits for the posted position.

     o   I am reporting a job posting that included an overly broad or unspecific description of benefits for the posted position.

     o   I am reporting an employer that did not make a job posting and also declined to provide requested pay and benefit information upon request to an applicant.

     o   I am reporting an externally-promoted job opportunity that was not announced, posted, or otherwise made known internally to all current employees.

     o   I am reporting an externally-promoted job opportunity that was made known to all current employees but not within 14 calendar days of the external posting.

     o   I am reporting an employer subject to the requirements of Illinois Equal Pay Act Pay Transparency who failed to preserve records related to Pay Transparency for up to five years.

     o   I am reporting retaliation based on exercise of rights under the Pay Transparency sections of the Illinois Equal Pay Act.

These appear on the auto-generated printed version of the complaint under “Reasons” as R1, R2, R3, etc.

By correlating the R-number to the line in the complaints section, you can determine the allegation(s).

The Department is working on improving this information available in printed complaints.