Here's One Big Change When You Apply For A Job In CT

CONNECTICUT — Prospective employees in Connecticut may have noticed this year that employers are no longer asking about salary history. A law that went into effect Jan. 1 prohibits the question during the interview process in an effort to close the gender pay gap.

The law, An Act Concerning Pay Equity prohibits employers from inquiring about a prospective employee wage and salary history. It doesn’t prevent prospective employees from voluntarily disclosing salary information. Employers can inquire about other benefits, but not about the monetary value of such compensation.

Employers who violate the law can be held liable for compensatory and other damages.

Former Gov. Dannel Malloy proposed the law at the beginning of the 2018 legislative session and it was passed nearly unanimously by state legislators.

“Among other causes, this inequity is perpetuated by the practice of asking prospective employees for their salary history before an offer of employment is put on the table, which disproportionately ensures that women who were underpaid at their first job continue to be underpaid throughout their careers, creating a cycle and causing harm,” Malloy said in a statement while signing the bill, adding that Connecticut women are paid on average 82 cents for every dollar paid to men.

The pay gap for women of color is even worse at 58 cents for black women, 47 cents for Hispanic women, Malloy said.

Malloy also signed a bill into law in 2015 that prohibits pay secrecy practices where employers wouldn’t let employees reveal their compensation to each other.

A Pew Research Center analysis found that women earned 85 percent of what men earned in 2018, for women ages 25 to 34 they earned 89 cents for every dollar a man earned. The gap has been shrinking slowly since 1980.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that median full-time wage and salary workers earnings for women were 82 percent that of men in 2017, but cautioned that earnings comparisons are broad and don’t control factors such as job skills, work experience and specialization. It also found that 25 percent of men employed full-time worked 41 or more hours per week compared to 14 percent for women.

Much of the gap has been made up do to greater educational attainment for women and other factors, but still 25 percent of women polled in 2017 by Pew said they earned less than a man for doing the same job. Only five percent of men in the same survey said they earned less than a woman for the same job.

The issue of equal pay came up in the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate debates. Kamala Harris said she would require corporations to post if they have a gender pay gap and fine them if the gap isn’t closed.