Britain to make salary disclosure in job ads mandatory

WalterBright

How is that going to work if you interview Bob for X task at Y pay, but discover Bob would be much better suited for A task that is worth more salary? What if Bob didn't meet the requirements for X, but would be a perfect fit for B task that is not worth as much salary?

feverzsj

actual salary = min(salary range);

Xenoamorphous

Do they say something about the min and max in the range being no more than X% apart? To prevent scenarios like "between £20,000 and £100,000".

poisonborz

Such laws do not really help in practice. Does a 60-90k range in EU, commonly given to engineering roles, offer any real guidance? A better system would be publishing the average salary for a similar role, but that would be a privacy problem for a low headcount team, or if the role doesn't exist yet... This is a really hard problem.

voidUpdate

Can we also make it mandatory to reply to a job application, even just an automated "sorry, your application has been rejected", so you know whether to keep considering that job?

ellen364

Cautiously pleased about this. Some companies in UK pay senior devs £30-35k. And some companies won't discuss that until v late in the process, while importing US-style multiround interviews. It's pretty silly when people get 3 rounds in, take time off work for the interviews, then find out their expectations are so far apart.

aregue

I have always felt that job ads should include salary information. The main reason is not to waste anyone's time. Often a narrow salary range or a clear link between requirements and salary are much more informative than a job description. I have experienced to apply to a job opening and go through one or more interviews only to find out that the company is actually hiring for a more junior position than the ad copy implied. A second reason is to avoid discrimination. Applicants that feel disadvantaged, even if they are actually qualified, may hesitate to negotiate for a higher salary in the same way that a other applicants would. The consequence is that they start with a lower salary. This applies specially to women. Plenty of research shows that they are less likely to negotiate their salary. Research[1] suggests that pay transparency leads to lower average salaries because employers avoid paying higher wages to any one employee to avoid costly negotiations with others. The effect is small, around 2%, and it disappears with increasing degree of unionization. In my opinion this is an acceptable price to pay to reduce pay inequality, which often is much more than 2%. It is also a good argument for joining a union. [1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w28903

gste

Labour's approach to problems is to tax employers into oblivion and then say "the reason salaries are so low is because we didn't ban them from posting adverts without salary disclosure".

worldsavior

Would that actually be a good thing? When a company publishes the salary range, that means the job seeker agrees to that range, including maybe getting the lower part of the range. Companies know that, and now they have the advantage to put lower ranges.

claw-el

Besides ‘salary disclosure’, one other law that really helps improve salary is to ban potential employers from asking candidates’ current/previous salary. This avoids potential employers from offering just marginally better than candidates previous roles…

lifestyleguru

Why do they have to disclose the obvious? The salary is GBP 25000 gross annually.

sjamaan

> The European Union adopted pay transparency rules the following year, giving member states until June 2026 to implement them in national law. That's the first I've heard of it, and I've seen plenty of job postings the past year for European companies where there was no salary indication. See for example the recent HN Who's Hiring? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50338728

gste

People will make out hiding salaries is some grand conspiracy, but if you've ever been on the other side of hiring, people just don't know. Would you like to have to pin your salary on your CV? Probably you are hopeful you can get as much as possible. And employers look for a deal. It works both ways. I agree that personally I'd prefer to see the salary on the job advert. But state meddling generally leads to unexpected outcomes.

iamflimflam1

The only real reason companies don’t want to put salary ranges on job adverts is that it triggers difficult conversations with staff they have been taking advantage of.

tyrabound

There are all kinds of reforms needed in that space; like whether a position is eligible for internal hire or not, requiring that a job posting must lead to someone being hired, making it illegal for jobs to be posted on fake foreign job sites in order to claim no native job demand exists as justification to import foreign labor, requiring a 100% visa employment tax on the fully burdened rate, making all executive bonuses taxable at 100% for any company that hires Visa/foreign labor, etc.

gadders

This is great news and an easy win. Not disclosing salary information disproportionately affects people from a lower socio-economic background.

temp123477

Feels like a law requiring prices on shop shelves. Isn't it self interest to put the salary in the ad? So much saved time. And probably more suitable applicants. I don't apply for a job without knowing the salary. Or via recruiters that tell you upfront (they usually do).

serhack_

In Italy this feature has become mandatory this summer and we've been observing some good patterns (companies that do not find anyone because the salary is too low compared to responsibilities). We have also seen interesting hacks, companies reporting from 20k to 150k for an intership position.

pythonRon

Back in the 1970's, it was common to do this in Canada... well, Nova Scotia..., well, Halifax... maybe.

slulu

I totally agree. When I’ve raised this to a CEO that was bragging that he gives competitive salaries but can’t disclose it, he said that a person that asks for the range before the interview it’s in it for the money.