Salary Transparency on Job Ads Is Changing How Americans Seek Work

Job seekers in the United States are calling on businesses to start displaying their salary ranges on job adverts, saying salary transparency should be employers' number one priority on postings.

It's fairly common for U.S. employers to not disclose their salary ranges publicly, with large corporations from Amazon to UPS listed amongst the worst offenders for lack of salary transparency, according to research by the national job search website Adzuna.

Applebee's, Deloitte, PwC, Shell, Safeway, Walgreens, Walmart, Pizza Hut, and Target were also ranked low on the list when it comes to telling job seekers how much their job is salaried, with only 3 percent of job ads including a salary range.

Adzuna's research revealed that 28 percent of Americans felt no salary or a lack of salary clarity on job adverts was their biggest frustration when searching for a new job.

Employers not including salary information on job ads are also leading to hours wasted for job seekers, according to the research. Fifty-four percent of job seekers said they had declined a job after they found out the intended salary after going through lengthy interview processes.

On average, those jobseekers wasted seven hours applying for the position, with 13 percent saying they had wasted 10 hours on the process, the study found.

Workers have been said to have wasted over 480 million hours applying for jobs with the wrong salary in the last five years, according to Adzuna.

With the Great Resignation well underway and a growing cost-of-living crisis, a third of workers have now said they wouldn't attend an interview in the future if they didn't know what an employer was willing to offer in terms of salary.

A third of job seekers said they assume the company is hiding something if they don't display their salary ranges, with around 30 percent believing it shows the company would underpay them, or be biased in how they pay their employees.

Over a quarter added that it makes the company look untrustworthy if they aren't able to be transparent with their offers.

Washington, D.C. was found by Adzuna to be the best area in regard to salary transparency, with 19 percent of job ads including salary, followed by New York at 6 percent and California at 5 percent.

Delaware, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Maine and Rhode Island came in at the bottom in regard to salary transparency, all with less than 1.5 percent of job ads including salary ranges.

Doug Monro, Co-Founder & CEO at Adzuna, told Newsweek: "Our research has confirmed what we have thought for a long time – job seekers are fed up with the job application process and the lack of salary transparency on job ads is one of the main issues.

"We're campaigning to make salary transparency a federal law in the U.S. and calling on all companies to join our mission. We want employees to know their worth and waste less time on applications, but we also want to bring value to employers who will be able to attract the right candidates for their open roles," he said.

"Most importantly, we want to combat the existing gender pay gap and see salary transparency as the start of this important journey."

U.S. workers are increasingly interested in seeing salary transparency in the job market. In fact, the lack of salary on a job ad makes potential employees skeptical of an employer, according to Adzuna.

Eighty-six percent of job seekers said they would be open for their colleagues to know how much they earn and 73 percent think employers making salaries more transparent would make the workplace fairer.

Although there's far more work to be done, U.S. companies are becoming more transparent. In 2022, Adzuna found that 3 percent of companies were transparent about salary compared to 1 percent in 2020.