Excellent measure. I remember interviewing at a very large corpo (think one of the main phone carriers), their application process online required applicants to reveal their salaries for the past 10 years. And before making an offer, they were asking for a W2 to make sure you were currently making what you claimed. Needless to say, I laughed at their face and walked.
I assume this law won't apply to questions like "how much are you expecting to make?".
Well duh, this law isn't trying to keep companies from knowing what the salary range for an industry is, they're trying to keep companies from taking advantage of (usually young) professionals who don't have the power to negotiate fair compensation.
There isn't a service offered by a credit bureau that I know, which allows an employer or a lender to find out about a prospect's salary. Salary info is used for credit risk strategies, and only where applicable or allowed.
I don't know how credible this is, but "The Work Number" (owned by Equifax) put this on an FAQ about this nefarious service:
Can just anyone get my income information from The Work Number?
No. You have to give someone authorization to get your income information from the service. There are numerous ways in which you can give someone authorization to access your income information. A few examples - by signing a borrower's authorization form when applying for a loan or by creating a salary key on our service, a one-time electronic signature.
> There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus.
This is based on self-reported data to creditors. I've never had a creditor verify my stated income in any way, they always waive in because my score is good enough.
I posted a link in one of the siblings to your comments, but this data results from employers giving/selling the data to Equifax for their The Work Number service.
I have to say I'm surprised at the number of HN readers who are unaware about the availability of this data.
Excellent measure only if the world worked by laws passed. Clearly the job market in Mass is very competitive and current salary is something that is helping employers make a better decision. Outlawing it only means top employers will have to rely on proxies where as low-end employers will violate the law nevertheless.
On the ground it only makes things worse for both employees and employers.
I assume this law won't apply to questions like "how much are you expecting to make?".