A Job Advert With The Number Missing
A jobseeker opens an advert, reads the duties, and finds no figure. They apply anyway and learn the pay at interview, after the preparation and the commute. That blank space is now the target of government policy. The prime minister is telling firms to fill it in voluntarily, now, rather than wait for a law that will eventually force them to do it. Legislation making pay details compulsory in job adverts is being brought forward “as soon as possible”.
The mechanism is easy to state. Salary information would move from optional courtesy to mandatory element of an advert. The government’s case rests on two propositions: that jobseekers — particularly those applying for their first job — are helped by knowing the pay before they invest effort, and that visible pay could help prevent discrimination. Neither proposition is self-evidently true, and the argument ahead will turn on which one survives contact with how hiring actually works.
The evidence ministers cite for public appetite is a consultation. The Cabinet Office opened one in the summer on pay and reducing discrimination, and the government describes the response as “overwhelming support”. The number attached to that phrase is 94% of respondents backing greater transparency.
Nearly one million young people are not in education, employment or training — the group the government calls Neet — and the final report of the Milburn Review into youth inactivity is due in the coming weeks. Publishing pay upfront is presented as one lever among several. In the government’s formulation, it could expose unjustified differences in pay, give workers greater confidence to challenge discrimination, and prevent disagreements over pay escalating into disputes. The government framed the practical case around the applicant’s time, in the words attributed to Andy Burnham:.” [1]
Half The Adverts Still Hide The Figure
The distance between that ambition and current practice is measurable. Data from the jobs website Adzuna shows that 51% of the adverts on its site in September included salary information. That is a narrow majority, and the direction of travel runs against ministers: the proportion has been falling in recent years. A voluntary norm, in other words, has been drifting away from disclosure rather than toward it.
Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, argues that openness about pay “should be the norm, not the exception”. [1] Employers who put a salary on an advert, in his account, “attract more applicants, and better-suited ones”.
Previous research from the CIPD, an industry body for human resources managers, maps who discloses and who does not. Public sector employers and charities are more likely to reveal pay information than private firms. Pay ranges are also more common than specific salaries. A range tells an applicant roughly what the job pays, but not the exact figure.
The same research found that not all employers were fully transparent. Pay ranges were sometimes wider than £10,000, which is less a disclosure than a gesture in the direction of one.
A Free Hand Or A Fixed Figure
The case against compulsion comes from the people who write the adverts. Neil Carberry, chief executive of the CIPD, accepts that giving salary details is, in principle, a good thing, while arguing that in practice it is “more complicated”. [1] His central objection is about discretion as much as arithmetic: “There isn’t always a single fixed figure, and employers will want to set pay based on a candidate’s skills, experience and potential.” A mandate, on this reading, assumes a number exists before the candidate does.
His second objection concerns who should decide. Drafting job adverts, in his account, is “best left to good employer practice rather than government regulation”. That is not an argument for secrecy; it is an argument that a single rule may fit some roles and distort others.
The UK is not drafting in a vacuum. The proposals resemble measures being introduced in the European Union, where employers will have to disclose the initial pay or range for new roles, either in a published job advert or before an interview. What the UK legislation will require, and how it will be enforced, has not been set out: the government says further details will follow “in due course”.
A week before the announcement, the equality watchdog had already gone further than the government. The Equality and Human Rights Commission said publishing salaries in job adverts would be a “positive step”, and recommended that bosses be required to respond to questionnaires about colleagues’ pay in order to cut pay discrimination. At present, employers do not have to respond to such requests. The Commission also said employers should be prevented from asking about current salary when offering a job, so that a history of discrimination is not carried forward. UK employers are currently allowed to ask, though applicants are under no obligation to answer.
