Maine employers must post pay ranges in many jobs

Do Maine employers now have to post pay ranges for jobs

Yes. Maine’s pay transparency law now requires employers with 10 or more employees to include a pay range in covered job postings, and the rule took effect on July 29, 2026. The law also requires separate pay-range disclosure to current employees on request.

The part people get wrong is the cutoff. The new posting rule is not for every employer in every situation. The statute says the posting requirement applies to employers with 10 or more employees. Maine’s Department of Labor says the same thing in its July 2026 guidance on the law.

The second part people miss is what counts as a posting. Maine defines a posting broadly as a solicitation for applicants for a specific available position, including direct recruitment by the employer and recruitment through a third party. That means the rule is not limited to a company’s own careers page. If the employer is using a public or internet job ad for a covered role, the pay range belongs there.

The law uses the phrase “prospective range of pay” and gives employers some room in how they set it. Maine says the range is the one the employer anticipates relying on when setting wages, and it can be tied to a pay scale, a previously determined wage range, the wages of people in equivalent roles, or the budgeted amount for the position. The point is to show the applicant the pay window up front, not a promise of a single fixed number.

There is a real exception for commission-only roles. If the position is compensated solely on commission, the posting does not need a numeric range, but it must say that the compensation is based solely on commission. That matters because some employers assume every posting needs a dollar band, when the statute gives commission-only jobs a different disclosure format.

Maine also created a separate rule for current employees. On request, an employer must disclose the range of pay for the position the employee holds. That is different from the job-posting rule, and it applies even where the posting itself was not the only place a candidate might see the role. Employers must also keep records of position titles and pay history during employment and for three years after separation.

A lot of people still remember the earlier bill drafts, which used different language and sometimes different thresholds. What matters now is the enacted law. Public Law 2025, chapter 771 became effective on July 29, 2026, after passage earlier in 2026, and the Department of Labor’s guidance describes the requirement as live law, not a proposal.

If you are trying to figure out whether a specific job ad must include a range, the practical first question is employer size. The second is whether the posting is for a specific open role. The third is whether the role is commission-only. If those three points line up with the statute, the range must be there before the applicant applies.

If you are comparing Maine with federal platforms or other states, do not assume the same rules apply everywhere. Maine’s requirement is its own state law, and the compliance burden is on the employer posting the job. For teams already running hiring through multiple channels, the safest process is to make the posting template carry the pay range wherever the listing is published. If you are building hiring workflows and want a place to track work like this, DevConnect keeps that process free to use at https://devconnectplatform.com.

What happens when employers ignore the rule is not just a paperwork problem. Maine put the requirement into its labor code alongside other pay transparency and records duties, which means it sits in the same compliance category as other wage-related obligations. The inconvenient part is that employers need a repeatable process, not a one-off fix. If the posting goes live without the range, the mistake is already public.

For applicants, the immediate takeaway is simple: many Maine job postings should now show pay before you apply. For employers, the immediate takeaway is just as simple: if you have 10 or more employees, your standard posting workflow now needs a pay-range step, and commission-only jobs need the right wording instead of a numeric band.