Massachusetts Has Banned a Common Interview Question To Prevent "Gender Pay Gaps"

A measure has been signed into law in Massachusetts this week, aimed at closing the phony "gender pay gap."

Massachusetts took a big, unprecedented step to help close the gender wage gap https://t.co/0Ks88jDloM

— Vox (@voxdotcom) August 3, 2016

Part of the wacko law calls for the outright ban on asking a common question when interviewing applicants for jobs: What are you paid now?

Victoria Budson, executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University, said when individuals are asked for their past salary history, their wages get benchmarked against the last position they held instead of the job they're being hired for.

And that can mean lower salaries for women and minorities because of implicit bias — and perhaps occasionally explicit basis, Budson added.

In other words, Budson doesn't believe in supply and demand economics.  No employer is ever going to pay a wage above the expected marginal revenue of the employee regardless of what a job prospect says she earned in her last job and it certainly makes sense for someone looking for a job to do a bit of pay search to find out what the pay level is in a current market. If an employer offers less, the prospect can solve the underpayment with three words, "No, thank you."

-RW

(via MarketPlace.org)