Job listings should display the salary or range - petition to UK parliament closes on 9 July 2025

Please sign this petition if you agree with it.

Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700482/

"Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront - We ask the Government to make it a legal requirement that all job listings show salary ranges clearly and upfront. We believe this would create a fairer, more transparent job market, better inform candidates and reduce time-wasting when searching for jobs.

Sources state that 35% of UK job listings don’t list salaries, wasting time and widening wage gaps in various fields such as marketing (People Managing People, 2023). Countries such as the U.S. (in states like California) and the EU already require salary ranges in job postings (HR Dive, 2023; Council of the EU, 2023). We believe that a UK law would ensure fairer pay practices, reduce disparities, and help candidates make informed choices, building a more efficient and transparent job market."

I've just found out about this petition six days before it closes which is a shame as I'd have wanged on about it constantly if I'd heard of it sooner! In the UK many job adverts helpfully include the level of the salary, this is usually a range (expressed as £31,645-36,245 sort of thing). This is clear and helpful. Too many jobs still say 'competitive' though which is fairly uninformative. 

I don't believe that any jobseeker is helped by not having the salary information. 

I run a large-ish (4.6k subscribers) mailing list and in ~2018 I decided to stop posting any job advert to the list that didn't have a clear numeric salary. While that means some jobs can't go to the list (it's a shame, and I'm not particularly happy about that) what often happens is that when I email the poster to explain they can go back to their boss / HR people and pass the message on... resulting in a numeric salary added to the email. Hooray. 

Legally require all job listings to show salaries upfront
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700482/ 

 

Further reading
1. The Real Reason Job Ads Don't Include A Salary Range (19 March 2017) Forbes, by Liz Ryan.

2. "Theatres please please understand that advertising a job without a salary automatically makes working class artists think they can’t apply. @ace_national please have a word with your NPOs about transparency" (21 May 2018 - tweet is no longer extant so I've not included the reference as it looks like the author has shuttered their account).

3. "There is no good reason to post a job ad without a salary range. There are only bad reasons: 1. To keep current employees from learning they’re underpaid 2. To keep candidates unaware of the budgeted range 3. To use candidates’ salary histories as free market research" (27 July 2019) @humanworkplace (the author of the Forbes piece above).

4. Perspective: The EU Pay Transparency Directive (9 Jan 2025) Deloitte - this doesn't affect the UK

5. Pay transparency in the EU
 - "New rules on pay transparency should help tackle pay discrimination at work and contribute to closing the gender pay gap." - this doesn't affect the UK