You don't need an individual's salary to "address pay inequality". You need statistics along the axes of inequality that you choose to care about (which is another discussion altogether...)

Pointing out (rightly) that H1B salaries are public is not a great argument; I think it's pretty lousy that we publish the salaries of individual immigrants. We should stop doing that, and publish anonymized data instead.

But at the end of the day, there's no law of the universe that any piece of information should or shouldn't be public. These are cultural norms, and fairly debated.

That's funny; this "cultural norm" only seems to exist when employees are concerned, while employers of course share your salary history widely and frequently. Equifax "The Work Number" boasts some 573 million records, of which they have leaked at least 170 million in the past. It seems you are getting played; markets, of course, profit from optimal information.

...and I don't support that, either.

If everyone's pay was public, it wouldn't be a major issue and nobody would care.

But if only a few people's pay ends up being public, it will cause issues.

Government employees pay is already public. I assume the only people with a problem with it know they are not worth as much more than others as their compensation suggests.

Just to expound for a bit, labor market efficiency would be increased by income transparency. We all want our markets operating with as few distortions as possible, right?

> Why do you consider that a privacy violation?

Because that is the culture in USA. You finding it weird is not a reason to be dismissive.

I never said I found it weird, nor was I being dismissive. I was asking OP to question their own assumptions. Their default assumption was "salary is private" and I wanted them to ask themselves why they feel that way.

I suppose it's a good question, but I'd also ask people to justify why they think it isn't private.

Really though, I haven't thought about this question much. I'll give it a shot:

I were going on a first date, and the woman asked me as getting-to-know-you small-talk, "What is your annual salary?" I would find this off-putting. Same if I were meeting her parents sometime later and they asked me. I'd find it strange if a neighbor asked me, or if a used car salesman asked me, etc. My default assumption, if someone asks me my salary, is to think about for what purpose would they want to know this information, as the knowledge of my salary would imply they intend to treat me differently based on my response. (So in the case of a first date, I could say a number where she responds, "That's not enough for me!" and gets up to leave. Or for a car salesman, he might say, "Oh, well, this car is usually $15,000, but for you it is $16,000.")

The only cases where I find this to be a reasonable request is when I'm applying for a loan or credit, as I think it's fair for underwriters to want to be able to calculate whether or not they think I'm good to pay them back (and, on my end, I'm expecting to receive temporarily-free money from them, so the transaction is not one-sided).

Now, I don't think that's automatically the case with a law like this, but I don't think it's not the case either!

So I have a continued expectation that my salary is Nunya. Unless someone can pose a convincing argument that it ought not be private, or if such a law would also prohibit my employer or others treating me differently with the knowledge of my salary, I will not support laws like these.

The first date question is interesting. I have two answers. First, it's a different context. A salary negotiation and a date are two very different things. But secondly, would it be so bad to get that out of the way up front? If one of her deal breakers is, "needs to make enough money" isn't it better if you both learn that sooner than later and not waste time?

And let me also throw this out there: If you own a house, the amount you paid for it and its current value are public information. In theory anyone with your address can see how much you paid for your house. If it was recent, they can probably guess your salary too. Do you think home values should be private?

In the case of both home values and salary, having it public helps everyone, because it balances the information in the marketplace (of homes and employees).

Employees win when they have more information about salaries of other people.

> If you own a house, the amount you paid for it and its current value are public information.

This is not the case in every jurisdiction. Even in my jurisdiction (where purchase price is), for my house purchase you get a small amount of indicative information about what my salary was 17.5 years ago. (Indicative only because you get the purchase price, but you don't know how much of that I financed vs paid cash for. Knowing what I made 17.5 years and 8 positions ago seems not that helpful.)

That's why I said if it was a recent purchase. You know, like someone who might be going on a first date who is more likely to have just purchased their home?

> Unless someone can pose a convincing argument that it ought not be private

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(market)

> Transparency is important since it is one of the theoretical conditions required for a free market to be efficient

How should high schoolers know which skills to pour their time and energy into acquiring if they do not have information about which way labor prices are moving?

Isn't this achieved from something like the CA law proposed but without demographic data?

At a past job, they anonymized company survey data at various levels including not sharing demo breakdowns in data if a person was on a team with fewer than four members or something like that. I'd be open to a law like the one in CA with the stipulation that demo breakdown data won't be shared if it represents two or fewer employees in a group.

Market transparency is good and can be achieved to some extent without knowing an employee's exact salary.

I'll add that I've also worked with envious people who would potentially treat their coworkers in a hostile manner if they perceive some unfair imbalance in their pay, rather than seeking a new job or taking it out on an employer. For some, there is a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality.

My preference would have been to simply require publicly posted job ranges on job listings. I would not even need maximum pay, the minimum pay would be enough info.

Although I would have required including health insurance metal level and subsidy percentage and 401k match, since they are significant and easy to predict/measure components of compensation.

The demographic stuff is a waste of time and potentially harmful, in my opinion.

> I'll add that I've also worked with envious people who would potentially treat their coworkers in a hostile manner if they perceive some unfair imbalance in their pay, rather than seeking a new job or taking it out on an employer. For some, there is a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality.

I feel like this mentality would get rectified quickly. There are many jobs with publicly known disparities in pay that function properly, such as finance, tech, and government. It will be a problem initially due to having to reconfigure people’s expectations, but after that it should be fine.

It's objectively weird that your salary is private, except to other employers, banks, landlords, lenders, your cable company, and literally anyone else who pays Equifax $30 to run a credit check on you.

It's public for nearly anyone who matters, and private for nearly anyone who doesn't. It's public for nearly anyone who can use this information against you. It's private if you want to use it to benefit yourself.

It's not weird, but the reason you find it a privacy violation is that you're told so by employees (directly or indirectly. Employees are the only side to benefit from you being secretive about it.

There are really not that many reasons to hide it, unless you're lying to someone about it.

I've used knowledge of someone's salary to tilt negotiation in my favor multiple times.

Cultures change.