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I think the OP might have meant to type PII (Personally Identifiable Information) not IP (Intellectual Property).

> It's not like they are saying "John Doe, who lives in 1600 Pennsylvania Av., makes 120k".

It would be trivial for someone to aggregate that data from additional public sources, e.g. find a list of employees on LinkedIn and use their listed Job Title to determine salary.

Companies do have some responsibility to keep their employee’s personal data private, and this seems like a reasonable balance.

But if you see that an employee in SF makes 120k, and an employee in Berlin makes 90k, for the same role, you can calculate the "location factor" they are using, and as this is proprietary (as per the previous comment), that data cannot be published

If it's anything like my company - we buy information on how the average salary and cost of living changes in different areas over time. That's the information that's proprietary.