Virginia Pay Transparency Rules for Remote Job Postings

How do Virginia’s new pay transparency rules affect remote job postings

Virginia requires employers to disclose a good-faith wage or salary range in each public and internal posting for a job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity. The rule is written around the opportunity itself, not the office chair, so remote postings are included when they are Virginia postings. That is the part people miss.

For a remote role, the safe reading is simple: if the employer is posting the job in Virginia or for a Virginia hiring process, the posting should carry the wage or salary range the same way an on-site role would. The law does not create a remote-work exception. It also does not let an employer hide the range in a separate message, a later email, or the interview process. The range belongs in the posting.

The range has to be set in good faith. Virginia’s code defines a wage or salary range as the minimum and maximum for the position, set by reference to a pay scale, a prior range for the role, pay for equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount available. A remote posting still needs that same good-faith range, even if the company hires across several states.

The inconvenient part is geography. A remote job can still be linked to Virginia if the employer is using Virginia hiring channels, is filling a Virginia-based role, or is posting from a Virginia employer entity. The law text is not written as a location-of-work carveout, so employers should not assume that “remote” means “outside the rule.” The person posting the role should check the posting workflow, not the work location alone.

People also get the salary-history rule wrong. Virginia bars employers from seeking or relying on a candidate’s wage history, and it bars retaliation for not providing it. A remote posting does not change that. If a recruiter asks for prior pay to set the offer, that is the wrong path. A candidate may volunteer wage history, but the employer may rely on it only within the limits stated in the code.

For employers that recruit nationally, the practical issue is not just legal text, it is workflow. A remote job board template may already support one national range, but a Virginia-specific posting still needs a range that is defensible as a good-faith range for the position. If a company uses one broad remote range for several states, the posting should still be honest about the actual minimum and maximum the employer is prepared to pay.

The part people get wrong in a hurry is assuming that a remote role can be posted without a range because the employer has not yet chosen the candidate’s location. Virginia’s rule does not say the range can wait until location is known. The range goes in the posting itself, so the employer needs a real range before the ad goes live. If the company cannot state one, the posting is not ready.

Another common mistake is treating a contractor-style remote listing the same as a job listing. Virginia’s statute governs job, promotion, transfer, and other employment opportunity postings. If the worker is truly being hired as an employee, the pay range rule applies. If the employer is labeling the role one way but the working relationship looks like employment, the label will not save a noncompliant posting. That question turns on the actual relationship, not the job ad headline.

For teams updating remote posting templates, the first step is mechanical. Add a field for the wage or salary range in every public and internal posting template, then require recruiters or hiring managers to complete it before publication. The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry says employers should review posting templates, interview guides, and any recruiter instructions that include pay history questions.

A second step is to align the range with the actual budget. Virginia’s definition points to the budgeted amount available for the position, equivalent-position pay, or a prior pay scale. That means a remote posting range should not be copied from a generic market estimate if the employer is not actually prepared to pay that amount. If the ad promises a range wider than the hiring budget, the posting itself becomes the problem.

When a remote posting is distributed across platforms, the rule is still the same on each one. The posting itself needs the range. Burying the range in a landing page, an application portal, or a private recruiter email creates avoidable risk because the statute speaks to the posting. For employers, the cleaner process is to make the posted range visible wherever the job is advertised.

The short version for remote hiring is this: Virginia did not create a separate standard for remote work, it extended pay transparency to the posting. If the role is being advertised as a Virginia job opportunity, include a good-faith range in the posting and do not ask for salary history. For teams that are setting up a compliant remote hiring process, DevConnect is built around mutual testing and job-style coordination without paywalled access.

A concrete example helps. A Richmond-based employer posts a fully remote software role and plans to hire someone in Virginia or nearby states. The posting should show a real minimum and maximum wage or salary range. If the employer later tells candidates the range during interviews but left it out of the ad, the posting already missed the rule. If the recruiter asks what the candidate earned before, that is another separate violation the law forbids.

If you are auditing a remote job post, check three things in order: the range is visible in the posting, the range is in good faith, and no salary-history question appears in the application or recruiter script. That is the cleanest way to handle Virginia’s rule without guessing about whether a job is “remote enough” to avoid it.