That’s because not all jobs pay purely in salary. Many jobs are also stock, which is excluded as the law only covers wages not compensation.

There’s a lot of people working for $1 because they want all stock, and need to accept $1 by law.

There are also executives who don’t take jobs that are stock based compensation because they value diversity in their investments. Having your job and money invested in your job means if something happens to your employer not only do you lose your job, your investments are shot too.

People in either bucket thing the other is an idiot.

And it’s not always executives. Lots of startups pay little bit pay in equity.

They also don’t have to disclose things like 401(k) specifics (you and your coworkers might not be getting the same matching), health plans etc.

A better version of this law would just be to open up tax returns and make them searchable.