'A sour impression' | Why is the UK shying away from pay transparency on job ads?

At a time when employers are supposed to be boosting levels of transparency, an uncomfortable truth is that when it comes to one key piece of employer-to-employee information – pay – most organisations are guilty of being the very opposite.

Last June, Adzuna starkly revealed what has long been a source of ire amongst jobseekers – that salary information on job ads is now vey much the exception than the rule. Not only did it find less than half (47%) of job adverts contained salary information, but this level is now the lowest it’s been since 2016 – when it first started measuring this. It was in 2023 that the proportion of job postings with salaries on them fell below 50% for the first time, and the trend has been downward ever since.

There’s got to be a better way

This reality was last month aptly focused-on by job-board, Indeed, in it’s latest TV ad campaign.

Entitled ‘There’s gotta be a better way’ – it features a toe-curling 20-second conversation between a recruiter and jobseeker. The recruiter starts by asking the applicant what ‘they’ were thinking they should be paid. The applicant replies: “I was hoping you would tell me what you were thinking…” The recruiter then says ‘After you...’ And after much to-ing and fro-ing Indeed cuts in with a voiceover: ‘skip the awkward chat’.