Most Accounting Jobs Still Hide the Salary - and Your State Decides Whether You Ever See It

Right now, about 42% of active US accounting and finance jobs post a salary in the ad, per Audit Friendly data as of July 2026. The other 58% make you apply blind - hand over a resume and a cover letter and a chunk of your evening, and just hope they don't come back with some bullshit number. And whether a given job lands in the transparent pile or the guessing pile comes down almost entirely to something you don't control: which state it sits in.

We pulled every active US accounting and finance posting on the Audit Friendly job board - just under 53,000 of them - and checked which ones actually put a pay range in the posting. The gap by state is one of the cleanest natural experiments I've seen in our data, and it lines up almost exactly with which states passed a law telling employers to knock it off.

The national number: 42%

Across 52,683 active US postings, 22,131 showed a salary range. That's 42%, a little over four in ten. Flip it around and more than half of the accounting jobs you're scrolling past have decided you don't get to know what they pay until you've spent the time to find out. For a profession that lives and dies on precise numbers, that's a hell of a thing to be coy about.

A dozen states force the range into the posting - and it shows

Twelve jurisdictions now require employers to put a pay range in the job ad itself: California, Colorado, Washington, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington, DC. In the postings from those states, 67% disclosed a salary. In states with no posting law, it was 26%.

Same job titles, a lot of the same employers, same six-month window. The only thing that changed was the address, and disclosure went up two and a half times. A few of the individual states:

• Minnesota - 75% (law took effect January 2025)
• Colorado - 74% (the first state to require it, back in 2021)
• California - 68%
• Illinois - 67%
• New York - 67%

And the bottom of the list, every one of them a state with no posting requirement:

• Mississippi - 11%
• Louisiana - 14%
• Texas - 21%
• Florida - 24%
• Georgia - 24%

A controller role in Minneapolis is roughly seven times more likely to just tell you the damn number than the same role in Jackson. Nothing about the work is different. The law is.

The type of law matters more than whether one exists

Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Nevada all have pay-transparency laws on the books too - but those laws only make the employer produce a range on request, or after they've already interviewed you, rather than in the posting. So they technically count as transparency states.

In our data, those three sit at 35%. Barely above the no-law states, and miles below the ones that force the number into the ad. What actually moves disclosure is the mechanism - the range has to land in the posting - and a law that lets an employer wait until you ask is a law most employers will happily let you never ask about.

Why a quarter of no-law postings still show pay

The no-law states don't sit at zero, and that's worth understanding if you're hunting in one. National employers tend to run one posting template across every state, so once they're on the hook in California, plenty of them just put the range on the Texas listing too rather than maintain two versions. Remote roles push the same direction, harder.

Remote US postings in our data disclose at 51%, against 41% for onsite. A remote accounting job is open to someone sitting in Denver or LA, which quietly puts it under Colorado and California law no matter where the company is. So transparency leaks across state lines through remote work, and if you're stuck in a no-law state, that leak is your friend.

If you're job hunting, use this

You can't change your state legislature before your next application, but you can aim at the postings most likely to be upfront:

• Filter toward remote and national employers if you're in a low-disclosure state - they're the ones dragging the range into the open. Our job board lets you filter remote accounting and finance roles directly.
• Don't treat a blank salary as a black box. When a posting hides the number, our salary insights tool estimates what the role most likely pays by title and metro, so you can decide whether it's worth the application before you write it.
• Walk into the conversation with a number. In the on-request and no-law states you can still ask early, and it helps to ask from a position of knowing the market. Our interview prep tool gets you ready for exactly that part.

If you're hiring, read the room

Posting the range is already the default across the states that hold half the country's accounting talent, so candidates have gotten used to seeing it. When your listing is the blank one, plenty of them read it as either you don't know what the role pays or you're planning to lowball, and the good ones just keep scrolling. If you want the people who have options, a specialist accounting recruiter and an honest range will get you further than a mystery box.

FAQ

Do accounting jobs have to post a salary? It depends on the state. About 42% of active US accounting and finance postings show a range. In the twelve jurisdictions that require it in the posting, it's around 67%; in states with no such law, around 26%, per Audit Friendly data, July 2026.

Which states require a salary range in the job posting? California, Colorado, Washington, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Hawaii, and Washington, DC all require the range in the ad. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Nevada have laws that only require disclosure on request or after an interview.

Why do some jobs in no-law states still post salary? Mostly national employers running one posting template across all states, plus remote roles that fall under stricter states' laws because they're open to applicants living there.

Do remote accounting jobs post salary more often? Yes. In Audit Friendly's July 2026 data, remote US postings disclose a range 51% of the time versus 41% for onsite roles.

Based on 52,683 active US accounting and finance postings on the Audit Friendly job board as of July 2026, drawn from our full database of 190,000+ postings. "Disclosed" means the employer put a pay range in the posting itself. State pay-transparency law classifications confirmed against current 2026 employment-law guidance.