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Advertising The Almighty Buck United Kingdom

Britain to Make Salary Disclosure In Job Ads Mandatory (reuters.com) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the show-me-the-money dept.
Britain plans to require employers to disclose salaries in job advertisements. "Whether you're a young person starting out or a parent trying to support your family, you should know what a job pays before spending your time and effort applying for it," Prime Minister Andy Burnham said in a statement. Reuters reports: The government said requiring companies to disclose pay in job ads would help young people applying for their first jobs, while boosting pay transparency and helping tackle disparities that can disadvantage women. Just over two in five employers always publish salary ranges, while fewer than one in five always disclose specific salaries, Burnham's office said, citing estimates from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The government will soon introduce legislation to parliament making salary disclosures mandatory, Burnham's office said, although it did not provide a timeline. Nearly one million, or 13%, of 16 to 24 year-olds in Britain are not in employment, education or training, one of the highest shares in Europe. A government review into youth inactivity is due to be published later in November.

Britain to Make Salary Disclosure In Job Ads Mandatory More | Reply

Britain to Make Salary Disclosure In Job Ads Mandatory

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  • What kind of free market are we supposed to run with greater access to price signals and less asymmetry of information?

    Brutal collectivists in Whitehall will be demanding low barriers to entry next!

    • Re:Commu-fascism! (Score:5, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:08PM (#66413124) Homepage Journal

      And before someone says it, these laws usually state that where a salary range is given, it must be "reasonable". Exactly what is reasonable ultimately comes down to a court to decide, but that's how it works for a lot of things here. Tricks like making the top range unattainable are also likely to be illegal.

      Hopefully it will also be illegal to offer less than the minimum on the ad.

      This is good not just for job hunters who can avoid wasting their time, but also for employees who can see what they are paying new hires.

      • This is good not just for job hunters who can avoid wasting their time, but also for employees who can see what they are paying new hires.

        Oh comeon, how are employers supposed to make a honest profit if they can't screw the help?

    • I have to add unfettered as a qualifier because of the wise trolls just yell communist at you over and over and over again.

      You do not have enough information to function in a capitalist society. You do not know for example if your employer is going to fire you next week. None of us do and they go out of their way to hide that information from us.

      When you pick what profession you're going to go into you don't know if there's a multi trillion dollar conglomerate in the process of automating it. I had

      • And what the fuck does any of that have to do with the UK? You know, the country this article is actually about.

        You do not know for example if your employer is going to fire you next week. None of us do and they go out of their way to hide that information from us.

        UK employment law is not "at-will", as I believe you call it. Once you've completed your probationary period with an employer they can't just sack you without a good reason.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 )

          And what the fuck does any of that have to do with the UK? You know, the country this article is actually about.

          newcastlejon, you must be new here. Meet rsilvergun, our resident village idiot, for whom "on-topic post" has no meaning.

  • Washington State US, already does (Score:5, Informative)

    by sdinfoserv ( 1793266 ) on Friday November 06, 2026 @12:06PM (#66413114)
    Any jobs advertised in Washington State must also include salary range. This has been State law for years and is extremely useful. As the article states, you know when to not waste your time.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      yeah i have seen the job posting a range 70k-150k....

    • The law in California as well, since 2021. It changed how the tech company I worked at does their job listings, but it was over all pretty painless one we adapted to it. HR has a salary range list it works from and the job role only had to be tied to a specific range of levels for those ranges to be meaningful. End result was we stopped advertising entry level roles. Mostly the actual entry level hiring was done through internships and work visa programs. Those H1-B visa jobs get "advertised" elsewhere, not

  • at $0.97/hr I was living like a fucking Sultan.

  • Well (Score:2)

    by pele ( 151312 )

    If you've ever lived in the UK you'd know salaries were always prominently displayed in job ads. They only partially disappeared in the past 10-15 years and only god knows why. I wouldn't legislate for it though, just bring them back into job postings without government having to tell you to. Same thing with rents.

  • In my company once similar law came into life the pay ranges became veeery wide... like upper limit 3x the lower limit...

  • Solve the problem with nepotism first.

  • I know companies who post the range for the salary, and time and time again they run into the same scenario. Someone will make it through the interviews, to the offer, and counter the listed offer on the ad of 90k, with something like 150k, and act taken-a-back when told no. Salary transparency sounds good, until you realize people can't read, or don't care. At least they're not calling for employee salaries to be public, that's another major cluster bleep.

    • I had a similar thought. In a lot of jobs, people aren't 'commodities.' Person A is not the same as Person B, and so you can't just directly swap between them. That means, if you're hiring a person, and not just filling a commodity role, that you'll need to have this negotiation, and room to allow the negotiation.

      Except that there's no central 'hiring app' it would be interesting for that negotiation to start before the interviews did. Both sides present their salary range, and if they aren't comp

      • We post the salary range, and we have people counter with insane requests. On a job offering 75 - 80k, at a small company, we had someone counter with 200k+, and was taken-a-back when told “No, we're not paying anything near that for this role.”

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      I know companies who post the range for the salary, and time and time again they run into the same scenario. Someone will make it through the interviews, to the offer, and counter the listed offer on the ad of 90k, with something like 150k, and act taken-a-back when told no. Salary transparency sounds good, until you realize people can't read, or don't care. At least they're not calling for employee salaries to be public, that's another major cluster bleep.

      Requiring a range doesn't mean much if the range is permitted to be inaccurate. Many published ranges ARE inaccurate. Candidates who been through the process for a while or multiple times know this.

  • Even without the silly "$minimum wage to $million dollar" game, you can still advertise a very-low-end-of-industry-standard actual day-1 salary range with a clear statement along the lines of "opportunity for very large increase after 30 days" or something like that, and get the word out that you really mean it.

    So, if you are advertising for a job that you are willing to pay 100K-150K/year for depending on qualifications, but the industry range is 80K-150K and you want to avoid posting your real salary, pos

  • Each one has an exact posted salary. We encourage you to apply to whatever range of them you want, and are happy to consider you for all of them with one convenient application.

  • Job seekers are about to get a rude awakening about how much they're really worth.

  • Here in UK, I assumed it was the first thing you would show in an ad, and the law would not need to specify it. How else would an employer attract a potential hire without the financial incentive? This is very odd. I don't think I've ever seen an employment ad anywhere without the salary or other remuneration shown.
    • For some reason, in the last decade or so, UK companies have started putting "Competitive" as the salary for every job they list.

      They don't seem to like it when you fill in your application with "competitive" as every single answer...

  • So are they going to claim the range changed based on the candidates they make offers to?

    Or give such vague ranges as to be useless ($0-max anyone would ever get, anywhere, even so high that they don't plan to actually offer)?

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