Why Publishing Salaries in Job Ads Could Backfire

Most of us would like to know what the person at the next desk earns. Did they get the raise we were quietly hoping for? Is there a gap we could close at the next review? Right now that's office politics, the kind of guessing game people play over coffee. Soon it could become a legal entitlement. Andy Burnham's government is considering a rule that would require employers to show the exact salary in every job advertisement, and that's only one piece of a wider push for pay transparency.

Burnham's team has a knack for small, headline-friendly measures, and this one won't stop at adverts. Last month the Equality and Human Rights Commission recommended full transparency on pay, including a legal right for employees to find out what their colleagues earn. So the question isn't just whether salaries belong in job ads. It's where this road leads once it starts.

Why the idea sounds better than it works

On paper, showing the salary upfront looks fair. Nobody should have to play a guessing game before applying. In practice, I think it runs into a few problems.

The first is flexibility. Employers often adjust pay depending on how they see a particular candidate: their experience, how they interview, what else they bring. Take that room away and the employer may end up with a weaker hire. Worse, a fixed published figure has a habit of becoming a ceiling. If you have to name a number beside the vacancy, the safe move is to pick the lowest figure you can justify. That's not a villain's plan. It's just what most managers would do with a public number they might be held to. Candidates who would have negotiated upwards could find themselves starting lower.

The second is the cost of enforcement. Any new duty needs someone to check it. Picture a new body with hundreds of staff reading vacancy listings, sending letters, and issuing fines to anyone they decide has broken the rules. That machinery costs money, and taxpayers or employers end up paying for it. Small businesses feel that kind of compliance burden far more than large firms with dedicated HR teams. Here's the thing: a rule that's expensive to police can end up getting applied unevenly, which is hardly fair either.

The third is scope creep, and I'd argue this is the one to watch. Once salaries are on the list, it's easy to add more. Holiday allowance, maternity leave, sick day policy, whether lunch comes with free snacks, and then targets for gender and ethnic representation. Each addition sounds reasonable alone. Together they turn a job advert into a compliance form. Regulators tend to grow once they have a foothold, and the rulebook grows with them.

What pay looks like on the ground

Here's where I think the debate gets interesting. Publishing salaries assumes that the numbers will be surprising, that there's a hidden spread waiting to be exposed. In many places, that spread is narrower than people expect.

A few years of wage rises tied to the living wage have pulled entry-level pay upwards. A report from the Centre for Cities earlier this year found that in cities such as Doncaster, the living wage now reaches as high as 82% of the median salary. It sits at similar levels in roughly two-thirds of UK cities. The living wage is set by the chancellor once a year, so for many workers, the floor is essentially a public figure already.

Wage compression makes the same point from another angle. The gap between a fast-food shift supervisor and a more skilled role in a cafe or a small workshop can look smaller than the job titles suggest. If pay across many roles is converging, then publishing a salary tells you less than you'd think. You'd mostly confirm what you already suspected. The real surprises tend to come from senior and specialist roles, where pay varies widely and where a single advert figure would tell you very little about bonuses, equity, or how a company negotiates.

What actually helps workers

My read is that the strongest protection for workers is still a healthy job market. When there are plenty of openings, people can walk away from a poor employer and find another one. That leverage does more for pay than any single disclosure rule. Adding layers of regulation can make hiring slower, more cautious and more complicated, which tends to hurt the people looking for work first.

If you're job hunting, there are steps you can take now without waiting for any rule change. Look at published pay ranges where they exist and check independent salary surveys for your field and region. Ask recruiters early what the budget for the role is. Keep a simple record of your achievements, because that's what gives you grounds to negotiate. None of this is guaranteed to land you a raise, but it moves the odds in your favour.

And yet, a fair debate about pay transparency is worth having. Some people really do lose out because they don't know what's normal, and a clearer system could help them. The question is whether a blanket rule for every advert is the right tool, or whether it would simply trade one problem for a stack of new ones. If the proposal moves ahead, watch the details closely: how the figures are set, who checks them, and how many extra rules arrive alongside them.