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Salary Range vs Salary Band: Understanding the Difference
What a salary band is
A salary band is the formal compensation structure for a job grade, including the minimum, midpoint, and maximum, along with the job evaluation score, market benchmarking data, and pay positioning strategy that produced those values. It is an internal governance document that applies to all roles in that grade across all job families.
What a salary range is
A salary range is the minimum-to-maximum spread extracted from a salary band for communication purposes, either in a job posting, an employment agreement, or in response to an employee request. The range is derived from the band. Every posted salary range should trace back to a documented salary band with a defensible methodology.
What Makes a Posted Salary Range Defensible
Grounded in documented job evaluation
The range must reflect the role's grade placement, which must itself result from a documented job evaluation using a consistent methodology. A range set without an underlying evaluation is essentially a number the organization made up, which will not hold up if challenged by a regulator or plaintiff attorney.
Anchored to current market data
The midpoint of the range must reflect current market benchmarking data from at least one recognized survey source, aged to reflect current market conditions. A range based on survey data from two or three years ago, not updated for market movement, is not current and may significantly understate what the market actually pays for the role.
Consistent with equivalent roles
The range posted for a Senior Software Engineer must be consistent with the salary band applied to all Senior Software Engineers across all departments. Posting different ranges for equivalent roles in different departments or business units creates pay equity exposure and regulatory risk.
Documented and retraceable
When a regulator or plaintiff attorney asks how the range was determined, the answer must be a documented methodology: the job evaluation score, the survey sources and percentile target, the pay positioning strategy, and the date the range was set. Without this documentation, the range is legally and reputationally vulnerable.
Salary Ranges Under Pay Transparency Laws
What California SB 1162 requires
California requires employers with 15 or more employees to include the pay scale for every job posting. The range must be a genuine good-faith range, not a placeholder. Employers must provide the range to any current employee who requests it for their current position.
What other states require
Colorado's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, New York's pay transparency law, Illinois EPOA, and Washington's pay transparency statute each have distinct requirements for what must be included in a posting (salary range only, or salary plus benefits and bonus information), which employers are covered, and what constitutes a violation. The trend is toward expanding disclosure requirements, not contracting them.
How to Set a Salary Range You Can Actually Defend
Step 1: Confirm the job grade through evaluation
Run or validate a JESAP evaluation for the role to confirm its grade placement. The grade determines which salary band applies.
Step 2: Pull the current salary band for that grade
The salary band for the grade contains the minimum, midpoint, and maximum derived from current market benchmarking and your pay positioning strategy.
Step 3: Confirm the band is current
If the salary band was set more than 12 months ago, check whether market movement warrants an update before posting the range. Posting a range from a stale band is a compliance risk in fast-moving talent markets.
Step 4: Post the range and document the methodology
Post the salary range in the job advertisement. Store the documentation linking the range to the salary band, the market data, and the methodology in your compensation platform. This documentation is what makes the range defensible.
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