Ontario job posting laws tackle vast pay ranges spurred by rules in other jurisdictions

Salary transparency efforts set for 2026 will include a $50,000 cap on pay ranges

Ontario job posting laws tackle vast pay ranges spurred by rules in other jurisdictions
Larysa Workewych, Jonathan Dye

The Ontario government’s new job posting regulations unveiled in December are part of a broader trend towards salary transparency that takes cues from how similar laws have played out in other jurisdictions, experts say.

The Working for Workers Four Act, set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026, amends the Employment Standards Act so that job postings must state salary ranges and whether artificial intelligence is being used to screen or assess candidates. The amendments also ban employers from including the requirement that candidates have Canadian work experience.

Another set of changes, introduced by the Working for Workers Five Act, will require job postings to disclose whether they are advertising an existing job vacancy. Employers will have to tell interviewees whether a hiring decision has been made within 45 days of their last interview date, and starting in July 2025, employers will also have to provide certain information to new hires – including their starting pay, hours, and work site – before their first day on the job.

The laws received royal assent last year, with Ontario announcing the effective dates and supporting regulations in early December.

When the new rules go into force in 2026, Ontario will become the latest jurisdiction to tackle pay equity through pay transparency laws. BC and Prince Edward Island currently require employers to include expected salaries in job postings, while other provinces – including Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador – have passed or introduced legislation with the same provisions. In the US, numerous states and localities have enacted rules requiring employers to include compensation figures in job postings since 2019, with at least five more jurisdictions implementing new laws this year.

The success of these rules has been mixed. While advocates have touted transparency as a way to weed out discriminatory pay practices and build trust between employers, employees, and job applicants, it has sometimes had the opposite effect – particularly when employers attempt to skirt the spirit of the law.

In a study published last year, for example, Indeed found that while the percentage of Canadian job postings on the site that advertised pay increased between 2019 and 2024, that salary information has also grown less precise, with fewer postings advertising exact pay levels. This landscape has frustrated job applicants, with some reporting that they felt the vast salary ranges posted by many companies were misleading, petulant, and made it challenging to assess how senior roles were. A Washington State University study published last year found that many study participants responded negatively to job postings with wide salary ranges, viewing employers with such postings as untrustworthy.

While the Ontario government has not explicitly stated that it is looking to troubleshoot these issues, its new rules essentially prevent employers from posting the vast pay ranges that job applicants have flagged as unhelpful, says Larysa Workewych, a senior associate at Dentons who focuses on labour and employment issues.

Under the rules, “if an employer is posting a range as opposed to specifying the total compensation, that range can't exceed $50,000,” Workewych says. That cap won’t apply to compensation exceeding $200,000, but because most salaries in Ontario are lower, most job postings will face the $50,000 limit, she adds.

This restriction could have implications beyond what employers can put in their job postings, argued Jonathan Dye, a Filion Wakely Thorup Angeletti LLP partner specializing in employment. While pay equity or discrimination rules have historically had “some effect on the variability of pay for the same position,” up until this point, employers have faced few legal limits regarding the range of salaries they could pay different employees for the same job.

“I'll use an extreme example – there's nothing to prevent a company from paying a brand-new person who's never had any experience $10,000, whereas somebody with 20 years experience gets $100,000,” Dye says.

“Now, you can't have a maximum range of more than $50,000. I'm not quibbling with that number, but it's an arbitrary number that the government has picked for whatever reason,” Dye says. He adds that the Ontario government effectively “used legislation that's designed, theoretically, to just impose a communication obligation to then go further than that by… [imposing] a restriction on the company's flexibility.”

If employers find ways to skirt other job posting rules – like those mandating that they disclose their use of AI – Workewych says she anticipates Ontario will introduce further regulations to try and combat loopholes.

As with many other employment laws, one of the biggest challenges of complying with the Ontario rules will hit businesses with employees in multiple jurisdictions. While the Ontario rules stipulate that, in most cases, they only apply to jobs that are performed within the province, employers with employees outside of the province will have to navigate similar but different rules in BC and Prince Edward Island, as well as any other jurisdiction that could soon implement job posting rules.

“This change in Ontario is part of a trend that we're seeing,” Workewych says. “We’ll probably see other provinces follow this trend in the coming year.”

Technically speaking, employers can comply with the rules of each province on a piecemeal basis, but Workewych says that “practically, my advice to employers is to consider what the most restrictive jurisdiction is, where you're seeing the most particularity or the most significant changes, and from an efficiency perspective, just adopt that across Canada.”