World of HR: Fewer UK employers are sharing salary information in job listings

Employers in the UK are limiting how much salary information they share with job applicants, according to recent data from Indeed.

In August, just 56% of job listings analyzed by Indeed had salary information, down from 65% in September 2024.

While the European Union issued a pay transparency directive in 2023 that will take effect in June 2026, employers in the UK are not obligated by law to share salary information in job listings. The decline in transparency observed by Indeed could be related to the economic cooldown the UK is experiencing. Now, more workers are “job hugging,” and just 1 in 10 employers plans to hire before the end of the year, HR Brew previously reported.

“Some hiring managers are being reigned in a bit whenever they get into negotiations around recruiting people just because of the broader context where organizations might be having to think about redundancies or hiring freezes,” David Lorimer, partner and specialist in pay transparency at Lewis Silkin, told Bloomberg.

Even with the decline, employers in the UK are more likely to advertise salary ranges for open positions than US employers (56% vs. 48.2%, respectively), according to Bloomberg.

The US has taken a piecemeal approach to pay transparency. There are at least 14 states, plus Washington, DC, with pay transparency laws on the books, requiring companies to share salary ranges in job postings, which some research and many pay equity advocates have said can help reduce the gender pay gap.

Companies that don’t provide pay information upfront could miss out on Gen Z talent, according to data from EduBirdie, which polled 2,000 Gen Z Americans about their attitudes toward finances and found that 58% of respondents would not apply for a job that did not list a salary.

“With Gen Z becoming a larger part of the workforce, it may be time for those employers to reconsider their choice,” Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek. “More importantly, it may not just be Gen Z in the years to come, as more employees across generations are desiring to have a better picture of pay because of current inflationary pressures.”