Jenna Estlick, Versique’s president of human resources solutions, is carefully watching how Minnesota job seekers are responding to a new state law that requires employers to include salary ranges in job postings.

Designed by the Minnesota Legislature to put more power in the hands of job applicants, the new law took effect on Jan. 1 for employers who have 30 or more employees.

In the first three months of 2025, Estlick said some early trends already are emerging. One of the most dramatic is that Estlick is seeing a marked increase in the number of applicants for posted jobs.

Her vantage point is through her work at Versique, a St. Louis Park-based search firm that identifies candidates for executive and professional positions as well as recruits people for interim consulting roles in human resources, finance, and accounting.

“We’re definitely hearing from clients, regardless of industry, that there is an increase in the number of applicants,” Estlick said. “We do believe that is happening based on the salary ranges now being posted.”

While she said she doesn’t have hard data to compare applicant volume for similar jobs in earlier years, she used the adjective “considerable” to characterize the increase in job seekers who are submitting applications.

That Minnesota pattern is comparable to what’s occurred in some other states when job postings included salary data. About 70 percent of employers reported they received more applicants when pay ranges are posted, according to research findings released by the Society for Human Resource Management in 2023.

With the influx in applications, search firms and companies are devoting more consulting and staff time to evaluate candidate applications. In some cases, they are using AI to screen applications for certain criteria. “At Versique, we do go through, and we look at all of those applicants and match up skill sets and experience with those [job candidate expectations of our clients,” Estlick said.

When job seekers see jobs posted with salaries that are much higher than they receive in their existing positions, the potential for a big pay raise motivates some of them to submit applications. “There’s nothing preventing a job seeker from applying for a job that they may not be qualified for,” Estlick said.

Across the U.S. and in Minnesota, pay transparency advocates have argued that posting salary ranges will help boost the compensation of low- and moderate-income workers as well as narrow the pay gender gap between men and women.

Knowing a salary range also may prompt some job candidates to be more aggressive in seeking a much higher salary, regardless of where they currently fall on the income scale.

“For job seekers who are seeing a salary range for a job posting, in most cases they want the top of that range,” Estlick said. “They want to make as much money as they can, even if their skills and experiences may not be exactly aligned with the [potential employer’s] expectations.”

When the potential employer and a job applicant have different assessments of the applicant’s abilities, Estlick said “that’s creating some friction” about what compensation level is appropriate.

That conflict can extend to people already on a company’s payroll. External job candidates aren’t the only people reading job postings that contain salary information. Existing employees judge their compensation against the salary ranges listed in their company’s job postings.

Estlick used the phrase “internal equity” to describe what employers should be seeking to ensure that new hires and current employees are paid in alignment with their skills and experience.

After looking at salary ranges in job postings, some existing employees want to renegotiate their compensation. “That’s really forcing employers to justify factors such as experience, tenure, and performance,” Estlick said. “If those companies are not preparing their managers to engage effectively in those conversations with their employees, those can be challenging situations for a leader to navigate and respond to. From a Versique standpoint, we are really encouraging our clients to make sure they are using data, they are analyzing it, and they’re understanding, from a market perspective, if their pay ranges are in line with the market.”

Complying with this new law has been “a heavy lift,” she said, particularly for small companies. “Larger companies have more resources to prepare for these types of changes,” she said, including large HR teams and in-house expertise on compensation.

“This [state law implementation] is all still very new,” Estlick said. “It’s just another example of how quickly things can change. Organizations that embrace change and plan for it are the ones that will thrive.”