UK Pushes Employers to Publish Salaries in Job Adverts: What HR Teams Should Do Now

What the UK government announced

According to the BBC, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is telling businesses to publish pay details in job adverts immediately, rather than wait for a new law that will force them to do so. The government plans to make pay details compulsory in adverts, with legislation brought forward as soon as possible. It argues the change will help jobseekers, particularly those applying for a first job, and could help prevent pay discrimination.

The government says a Cabinet Office consultation launched in the summer showed “overwhelming support” for greater transparency, with 94% of respondents backing the move. In the Prime Minister’s words: “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.”

What the government has not yet said matters just as much. It has not specified exactly what information will be required, whether a range or a single figure will satisfy the rule, which employers or roles are covered, or how the law will be enforced. Those details are promised “in due course”. Employers should therefore plan for the principle now and expect the specifics later.

Why the government is acting now

The announcement is explicitly tied to youth employment. The government framed it as part of efforts to reduce the nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training, known as “Neet”, ahead of the final report of the Milburn Review into youth inactivity, due in the coming weeks. The reasoning is that applying for jobs without knowing the pay wastes time and discourages people with the least experience of the labour market.

There is also an equality argument. The government said publishing salary details upfront could “expose unjustified differences in pay, give workers greater confidence to challenge discrimination and prevent disagreements over pay escalating into disputes”. The announcement came a week after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said employees should legally be able to find out what their colleagues are earning.

What the equality watchdog wants

The EHRC described publishing salaries in job adverts as a “positive step” and went further, recommending two additional measures:

• Pay questionnaires. Employers should be required to respond to questionnaires about colleagues’ pay. At present, employers do not have to answer employee requests for salary information about co-workers.
• No questions about current salary. Employers should be prevented from asking about a candidate’s current salary when making an offer, to stop a history of discrimination from carrying forward. Today, UK employers may ask, although applicants are under no obligation to answer.

These are recommendations from the watchdog, not government policy. But they signal the direction of travel, and a cautious employer will assume that a ban on salary-history questions and stronger pay-information rights could follow the advert requirement.

How common is salary disclosure today?

Data from the jobs website Adzuna shows that 51% of the adverts on its site in September carried salary information, and that the proportion has been falling in recent years. Adzuna co-founder Andrew Hunter said being open about pay “should be the norm, not the exception”, and argued that employers who put a salary on a job advert “attract more applicants, and better-suited ones”.

Earlier research from the CIPD, the professional body for HR, found that the public sector and charities are more likely to reveal pay information than private firms, and that ranges are more common than specific salaries. It also found that not all employers are “fully transparent”, with some ranges wider than £10,000. A range that wide may technically comply with a disclosure rule while giving a candidate very little useful information, which is why the detail of the forthcoming law matters.

The case against: employers’ concerns

Not everyone is enthusiastic. CIPD chief executive Neil Carberry said that giving salary details was “a good thing” in principle, but that in practice it was “more complicated”. As he put it, “There isn’t always a single fixed figure, and employers will want to set pay based on a candidate’s skills, experience and potential.” He also said that setting pay is a complex process and that drafting job adverts is “best left to good employer practice rather than government regulation”.

These objections are worth taking seriously because they point to real design questions the law will have to answer: how to handle roles where pay depends on experience, how to treat commission or bonus-heavy jobs, and how to avoid forcing a wide, uninformative range. The way those questions are answered will decide whether the rule changes behaviour or becomes a box-ticking exercise.

The European context

The BBC notes that the proposals are similar to measures being introduced in the European Union. Under those rules, employers in Europe must disclose the initial pay or pay range for new roles, either in a published job advert or before an interview. For multinational employers this is significant: a company hiring in both the UK and the EU will soon need a consistent approach that satisfies both regimes. The simplest route is to adopt the stricter standard across the board rather than maintain different practices by country.

What the trend and news context tells us

Google’s US trending feed on 5 November was dominated by sports and entertainment, so it is not a useful guide to UK recruitment interest. The signal here comes from the news cycle itself. The BBC paired the announcement with a reader callout asking whether people have applied for jobs without knowing the salary, and ran a separate feature the same day on candidates’ worst job interviews. Together with a macro backdrop of a Bank of England rate rise and talk of firms limiting hiring, the story lands in a labour market where candidates are cost-conscious and employers are cautious. Pay clarity is therefore both a candidate demand and a cost-management tool: it filters out applicants whose expectations do not match the budget before anyone spends time interviewing.

An employer action plan

You do not need to wait for the legislation to benefit from preparing. A sensible sequence looks like this.

1. Define pay bands for every role. You cannot publish a range you have not set. Document a minimum and maximum for each job family and level, with clear criteria for where a candidate falls.
2. Check internal consistency first. Publishing a range invites comparison with current staff. Review whether existing employees in the same role sit inside the band, and fix unexplained gaps before they become visible. The government itself says transparency could expose unjustified differences in pay.
3. Keep ranges meaningful. A range spanning more than £10,000 may satisfy a rule but frustrate candidates. Aim for ranges that reflect genuine decision space, and explain what moves a hire within it.
4. Stop relying on salary history. Move to offers based on the role’s band and the candidate’s skills and experience rather than what they currently earn. This anticipates the EHRC recommendation.
5. Update applicant tracking and job-board templates. Add mandatory pay fields so that no advert goes live without them, and align the wording across boards.
6. Prepare managers for pay conversations. Once salaries are public, employees and candidates will ask questions. Give hiring managers a clear script and escalation route.
7. Watch for the detail. Track the legislation, the scope, the definition of acceptable ranges and the enforcement model, and update your policy when they land.

Questions employers are likely to ask

Is it mandatory today? No. The government is urging early adoption, but the legal requirement has not yet been enacted and its details have not been published.

Will a range be enough? Unknown. The government has said it will set out what information is required. Ranges are already the most common form of disclosure among employers who publish pay.

Does it apply to current employees? The announced measure concerns job adverts. The EHRC’s separate proposal on pay questionnaires would affect existing staff but is a recommendation only.

What if we hire globally? Expect overlapping obligations. EU employers must already move toward disclosing initial pay or ranges, so aligning policies makes sense.

The risks of moving early, and of waiting

There are fair arguments on both sides. Moving early reveals pay to competitors and current staff before you have to, which carries some risk if your structure is not tidy. Waiting, by contrast, leaves you scrambling when the law arrives, and puts you at a disadvantage in attracting candidates now, given Adzuna’s finding that salary-bearing adverts attract more and better-suited applicants. For most employers, the balance favours preparing the internal work immediately, and publishing as soon as the pay bands are credible.

Bottom line

The government’s message is simple: show the salary. The legal detail is still to come, and respected voices such as the CIPD have raised practical concerns, but the direction is clear and is reinforced by the EHRC and by European rules. The employers who will find the transition easiest are those who have already done the unglamorous work: clear pay bands, consistent internal pay and a recruitment process that does not depend on a candidate’s salary history. Start there, and the new law will be an administrative step rather than a shock.

Sources: BBC News, “Firms told to publish salaries in job adverts ahead of new law” (5 November 2026), including data from Adzuna and the CIPD and statements from the EHRC. This article is general information, not legal advice.