Do you have to post a pay range for HVAC and plumbing jobs?

As of September 2026, the jurisdictions where our research verified a pay-range posting law are California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, plus the District of Columbia.

Treat that as a floor, not a census.

Our research verified these laws specifically; it did not survey every state, so a state missing from this list is not a state with no such law.

Check the rule in each state where you post jobs before relying on the list.

Cities are a separate layer this page cannot settle.

Our verification covered state statutes and D.C.'s code — city ordinances were not researched — so for hiring in any large city, check the city's own rules or labor agency alongside the state answer.

Two neighboring states sit just outside the list: Connecticut and Rhode Island don't require a range in the posting itself, but both require you to give an applicant the wage range — in Connecticut on request or by the time of an offer, in Rhode Island on request and before discussing pay.

What counts as compliance varies more than the headlines suggest.

Most of these laws ask for more than two numbers — several also require a general description of benefits in the same posting — and Illinois lets a hyperlink to a public pay page satisfy the rule.

Here is what each verified jurisdiction requires — the pay transparency laws by state, with the statute or agency behind it:

• California — 15 or more employees. The pay scale in any job posting, and the pay scale to an applicant on reasonable request (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado. Compensation, a benefits description, and how and when to apply — in all job postings, internal and public, per the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, which also requires notice of promotional opportunities to employees.
• District of Columbia. The minimum and maximum projected salary or hourly pay in all job listings, plus disclosure of healthcare benefits before the first interview (D.C. Code 32-1453.01).
• Illinois — 15 or more employees. The pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Maine — 10 or more employees. The anticipated pay range in job advertisements from July 29, 2026 (LD 54, per the Maine Department of Labor).
• Maryland. The wage range and a general description of benefits and other compensation, in each public or internal posting for work performed at least partly in Maryland (Labor and Employment Article, § 3-304.2).
• Massachusetts — 25 or more employees in the state. The pay range in job postings (General Laws Chapter 149, Section 105F, effective October 29, 2025).
• Minnesota — 30 or more employees in Minnesota. The salary range or fixed pay, and a general description of benefits, in job postings (Minnesota Statutes 181.173).
• New Jersey — 10 or more employees over 20 calendar weeks. The hourly wage, salary or range, plus a general description of benefits, in each posting (P.L.2024, c.91, in effect June 1, 2025).
• New York — 4 or more employees. The compensation or range of compensation when advertising a job, promotion or transfer performed at least partly in New York (Labor Law 194-b).
• Vermont — 5 or more employees. The compensation or range in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening (21 V.S.A. 495p).
• Virginia. The wage, salary or wage/salary range in each public and internal posting, effective July 1, 2026, and a ban on seeking applicants' pay history (Virginia Code 40.1-28.7:12).
• Washington — 15 or more employees. The wage scale or salary range, or the fixed wage, plus a general description of benefits, in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110); statutory damages run $100 to $5,000 per violation.
• Delaware — signed, not yet in force. Its pay-range posting law takes effect two years after its September 26, 2025 enactment — September 26, 2027 — and will not apply to employers with 25 or fewer employees (HS 2 for HB 105).

The employee-count thresholds run low, and they are not uniform.

New York covers employers with 4 or more employees and Vermont employers with 5 or more — small shops included.

New Jersey reaches employers with 10 or more employees over 20 calendar weeks, and Maine employers with 10 or more.

Illinois, Washington and California set the bar at 15.

Massachusetts counts employers with 25 or more employees in the commonwealth, Minnesota employers with 30 or more in Minnesota, and Delaware's law will not apply to employers with 25 or fewer employees when it takes effect in 2027.

For four of the verified jurisdictions, our research did not pin down a threshold.

Maryland's statute section contains no employer-size threshold, and the statute's definition of employer was not checked; Virginia's statute text likewise states no threshold; and for Colorado and the District of Columbia, the sources we verified don't state one.

Do not read that as "no threshold exists" — confirm with each state's labor agency where your headcount falls.

Where the job sits matters as much as headcount.

New York's duty covers advertising for a job, promotion or transfer performed at least partly in New York, and Maryland's covers postings for work performed at least partly in Maryland — so an out-of-state contractor whose techs cross the border can be covered.

Massachusetts counts employees in the commonwealth and Minnesota employees in Minnesota.

And the research recommendation is to check each state where the job is located — and where remote applicants live.

Nor is a "posting" only the public ad.

Colorado's requirement covers internal and public postings alike, Maryland's covers public or internal postings, Virginia's covers public and internal postings, New Jersey's covers postings for new jobs and transfer opportunities whether advertised externally or internally, and New York's law covers advertising for promotions and transfers — so moving a technician up to lead tech can trigger the same disclosure as hiring from outside.

Thresholds and effective dates change.

This page reflects laws verified in September 2026.

Before you build a posting policy on any single state's rule, confirm the current threshold and requirements with that state's labor agency — the agency, not this page, is what enforces it.

Nothing in the verified laws excuses a variable-pay posting.

The duties are written for postings generally — California requires the pay scale "in any job posting" and Colorado "in all job postings" — so a flat-rate service tech or a commission-only sales tech sits inside the requirement, not outside it.

Two states have commission-specific rules, and they point in opposite directions.

New York requires postings to clearly state when a position is commission-based, so a commission tech ad there names the range and flags the pay as commission.

Vermont goes the other way: a commission-based job there can satisfy the law simply by saying it is commission-based, without a range.

Where the pay is a single number, several laws accept it as-is: Washington's law allows the fixed wage in place of a range, and Minnesota's accepts a fixed pay figure.

Where you would rather not edit every ad, Illinois accepts a hyperlink to a public page carrying the pay scale and benefits.

D.C. words its requirement as the minimum and maximum "projected" salary or hourly pay — the statute's own framing, which acknowledges the number is an estimate.

What our research did not establish is the format each agency expects for variable pay — whether a flat-rate position should be ranged as an hourly equivalent, a weekly figure or some other expression, and how a commission plan's expected earnings map onto the required range.

Those are agency calls.

Before posting a flat-rate or commission role in any range state, ask the agency that enforces that state's law, or your employment attorney, what format satisfies it.

The plan behind the range carries compliance of its own, too — flat-rate and commission pay have their own FLSA overtime math, which our guide to overtime for flat-rate and commission techs works through separately.

And the range is one line of an ad that has to do a lot of work; for the rest of it — duties, licence wording, schedule — see our guide to how to write a job ad for HVAC technicians.

Two of the verified laws carry numbers.

Washington's law provides statutory damages of $100 to $5,000 per violation.

New Jersey's sets penalties of up to $300 for a first violation and up to $600 for each subsequent one — and the two differ in kind, damages in one state and penalties in the other, so the exposure is not one-size-fits-all.

For every other jurisdiction on the list, this page's research did not verify a penalty amount, and we will not guess one.

Get the enforcement answer from the agency behind that state's law — the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, the New York Department of Labor and the Maine Department of Labor are three of them — or from your employment attorney.

The asymmetry is what makes the fix cheap.

Writing a defensible range before the posting goes up costs one careful look at your pay plan; discovering a gap after a candidate or an agency raises it means reworking live ads and answering questions with the benefit of hindsight gone.

The checklist below is the before-posting version of that look.

Pay disclosure is one rule among many that come with a crew.

The rest of the employer side — finding, vetting and keeping technicians — is in our guide to hiring HVAC and plumbing techs.

This page is employer career and business information, not legal advice. Pay-posting laws change and vary by state and city — confirm the current requirements with the labor agency in every state where you post jobs, or with an employment attorney.