Best salary range format for a Delaware job posting

Post a minimum to maximum range whose width matches the pay scale you actually run, name the benefit categories in the same block, and keep the one sentence that says where the number came from. That is the compliant format for most roles. The exceptions are narrower than people expect and one of them, the single posted rate, is a legitimate option almost no coverage mentions because it lives in a subsection most summaries skip.

Delaware's duty starts on September 26, 2027 for employers with 26 or more employees. The statutory detail sits on the Delaware pay transparency law page. This article is about the narrower question you have to answer for each requisition: what shape should the disclosure take, and what number goes in it.

Delaware lets you post one number, and that is not a loophole

The duty is written twice and the two versions do not match. Subsection (b)(1) says an employer who announces or posts a job opportunity must include "the hourly or salary compensation range." Subsection (c)(1)a, the itemized list of what goes in the notification, says something wider: "the hourly or salary compensation or the hourly or salary compensation range."

Almost every summary quotes (b)(1) and stops, which is why employers come away believing a range is the only lawful format. Read the two together and a fixed rate is a compliant disclosure where the pay for the role genuinely is a single number. That is the ordinary situation for a posted hourly rate, a union scale step, or a role you fill at one rate every time.

The tradeoff is real in both directions. A single rate cannot fail the breadth test, because there is no breadth to weigh. It also ends the negotiation before it starts: you cannot pay the strong candidate more than the number you published without contradicting your own posting. A range keeps the room and takes on the width question. Pick deliberately rather than by default.

Five formats, and which one your role takes

Two of those rows are worth a second look. The commission carve-out reaches a job paid on commission "whether in whole or in part," so a base plus variable sales seat can decline to state a figure in Delaware. Maine excuses only roles compensated solely on commission, so the same requisition needs a number there. If you run one national ad template for sales roles, that single word splits it in two.

The union row is the one that quietly moves a date. Subsection (i) applies the section to postings for covered opportunities only after the agreement is executed, amended, modified, renewed or replaced after September 26, 2027. An agreement running to 2030 keeps those postings outside the section until it reopens, which means your real compliance calendar is driven by contract expiry dates. That is the kind of obligation worth putting into whatever you use to track compliance obligations against their deadlines rather than a note in someone's calendar, because the trigger is two years out and moves per bargaining unit.

How wide, when the statute gives no number

Section 709C(c)(1)a says "the breadth of the hourly or salary compensation range provided is one factor relevant to the analysis of whether an employer has complied in good faith with this section." That sentence is doing something specific, and it is not setting a cap. It makes width a piece of evidence weighed against the four anchors in the definition: an applicable pay scale, a previously determined range, the actual range of others currently holding equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount.

The practical consequence is that there is no safe percentage, and any article quoting one is inventing it. A band running from $95,000 to $130,000 is defensible if that is genuinely your scale for the grade. The same 37 percent spread on a role where everyone in the seat sits within $4,000 of each other is not, because nothing you can point to produced it. Width is only a problem when it is unexplained.

What that means for how you build the number: start from a market midpoint for the role and the geography, set the minimum and maximum from the scale you use for that grade, and record the source on the day you post. A normal band for an individual contributor grade runs somewhere around 30 to 40 percent from minimum to maximum, and the reasoning behind that spread is worked through in how wide a salary range should be. A range far outside your own norm is the one that invites the question.

The benefits line most postings will fail

Delaware puts "a general description of the benefits and other compensation" in the same operative sentence as the pay figure, in both (b)(1) and (c)(1)b. It is not a separate courtesy at the bottom of the ad, and the phrase employers reach for by reflex does not satisfy it. "Competitive benefits package" describes nothing. It contains no benefit.

General is the standard, not vague. A compliant version names the categories without pricing them: medical, dental and vision coverage; an employer contribution to a 401(k); paid time off and holidays; and any bonus, commission or equity that forms part of the package. "Other compensation" is the phrase that pulls the annual bonus target and the equity grant into the posting, so a role with a meaningful variable component cannot describe only its base salary and call the disclosure complete.

Write that block once, keep it as a template, and vary only the parts that genuinely differ by role. It is the cheapest half of the requirement to get right and the half most likely to be missed, because the pay figure is the part everybody argues about.

Internal postings take the same format

Subsection (c)(1) requires the disclosure "in the notification of each job opportunity in both internal and external job postings." A promotion announcement, a lateral transfer and an internal requisition all carry the range and the benefits description.

This is the format decision with the longest tail, because an internal posting is read by people who know what the job pays today. Publish a band for the grade above and everyone in the grade below can measure themselves against it. Any inconsistency you have been carrying becomes visible to exactly the audience able to spot it, which is why the posting format and the underlying structure are one project rather than two. Building salary bands you can explain is what makes the posted range survive being read internally.

There is also a format question for roles with no posting at all. Under (b)(2), where no posting has been made available to the applicant, you must give the range and the benefits description before any offer or any discussion of compensation, and again on request. For direct sourcing and referrals the format is a script rather than an ad, and the disclosure has to come before the first conversation about money, not during it.

One sentence that does most of the work

Whatever format the role takes, keep a record of the anchor. A single line filed with the requisition, naming which of the four reference points produced the number and the date, is what turns a posted range into a defensible one. Delaware's enforcement runs through the Department of Labor and the appeal is on the record without a trial de novo, so the documentation has to exist when you post rather than be assembled when someone asks.

The first offense is a written warning rather than a fine, and one job opportunity counts as one violation however many boards it lands on. That structure is forgiving about the mistake and unforgiving about the pattern. Get the format right once, template it, and the rest of the requisitions inherit it. The wider state by state picture, including which states will not accept the formats Delaware allows, is in pay transparency laws by state.