Client Alert: One Week Countdown to Pay Transparency and 2026 PFML Updates

By Tracy Thomas Boland and Danielle Jurema Lederman  •  October 22, 2025

One Week Countdown to Pay Transparency

One week from today, on October 29, 2025, the pay disclosure requirements of Massachusetts’ new pay transparency law will take effect. This means employers with 25 or more employees in Massachusetts have one more week to complete their preparations and ensure they are ready to include pay ranges in their job postings and provide the applicable pay range to job applicants and employees when circumstances demand.

Please note that this law’s data reporting requirements already went into effect on February 1, 2025, for employers with 100 or more employees in Massachusetts that are subject to federal wage data report filing requirements. See our previous client alert for a more detailed summary of the law’s requirements.  Please contact us for advice if your organization missed that deadline.

The Attorney General’s Office – which is tasked with enforcing this law – has also released guidance and FAQs to assist employers in identifying the scope of, and their obligations under, the new law. Of particular note, the Attorney General’s Office advised that employers should count all employees whose “primary place of work” is Massachusetts to determine whether they meet the 25-employee threshold (thereby triggering the law’s pay range disclosure requirements). The Attorney General’s Office defines an employee’s “primary place of work”  under the pay transparency law consistent with its Massachusetts Earned Sick Time FAQs. This means that an employee’s “primary place of work” is Massachusetts under the pay transparency law even if:

1. The employee spends work hours traveling outside Massachusetts (making deliveries, engaging in sales, etc.) but returns regularly to a Massachusetts base of operations before resuming a new travel schedule.
2. An employee is constantly switching work locations but the place they spent the most working time was in Massachusetts during the previous year.
3. The employee telecommutes through an arrangement with their employer to a Massachusetts worksite, even though the employee does not physically spend those telecommuting hours in Massachusetts.

Employers trying to determine whether they meet the applicable 25-employee threshold should count their employees once per year by averaging the number of employees with a primary place of work in Massachusetts over all pay periods for the year. In addition, for all jobs where the primary place of work is Massachusetts, covered employers must comply with the pay range disclosure requirements of the law.

Those with questions about complying with the pay transparency law should promptly reach out to their Bowditch employment attorney.

2026 Changes to Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave

On January 1, 2026, annual updates to Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave (“PFML”) will take effect.

For next year, that means another update to the maximum weekly PFML benefits amount.  Specifically, in 2026, the maximum weekly benefits under PFML are increasing from $1,170.64 per week to $1,230.39 per week.

Nevertheless, the applicable contribution rates are once again staying the same.  That means the total contribution rates remain 0.88% of eligible employee wages for employers with 25 or more covered individuals and 0.46% of eligible employee wages for employers with fewer than 25 covered individuals. Likewise, the breakdown of those contributions between medical leave and family leave remains 0.70% medical/0.18% family and 0.28% medical/0.18% family, respectively.

Employers seeking more information on their PFML responsibilities should contact their Bowditch employment attorney.