But in the last few years, increasing pay transparency has become a common cause for young workers, anti-discrimination advocates, and, increasingly, state legislators. But employers in states with transparency laws make up for it by imposing informal rules that prevent employees from talking about pay. If the "new norm" of salary transparency had supplanted the old taboo, then we'd expect a large majority to chafe under outdated restrictions against discussing pay. Strong support for managers in general appears to translate into strong support for managerial approaches to pay secrecy or transparency. If salary transparency is actually going to become the "new norm," it will clearly require more than our existing set of state laws.

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