Key Points
- Most Australian job advertisements don't include salary information.
- Experts say it not only disadvantages job seekers, but employers.
- Experts say the recent ban on pay secrecy in Australia could go some way to addressing the issue.
Employers are hiding how much they're offering for roles, despite job seekers wanting crucial salary information to avoid wasting time while on the hunt.
Two-thirds of job ads posted on SEEK in November did not contain a salary range, according to data from the employment marketplace.
The portion that did include it increased marginally year-on-year, up 6.5 per cent to 34.5 per cent.
Some employers were more forthcoming with pay details than others.
Salary information was included in about 50 per cent of government job ads, 46 per cent of recruiter-posted roles, 42 per cent of small to medium enterprise listings, 30 per cent of ads from healthcare providers, and just 13 per cent of corporate enterprise job postings.
Why don't employers include salaries in job ads?
Michelle Brown, a professor in human resource management at the University of Melbourne, said one of the arguments employers have for not including salary in job ads is that they want the flexibility to offer candidates what they believe they're worth.
"If you find an outstanding applicant, you can pay them what it's going to take to get them," she said.
Another argument is that making pay information public could lead to existing employees discovering discrepancies between their salary and their colleagues'.
"That could create problems for the organisation," she said.
Despite employers' concerns, polling suggests most people looking for work want to know salary information before they apply for a job.
A recent SEEK survey found 87 per cent of respondents believed advertising pay was important or extremely important.
Almost half of the 400 job-seeking respondents to the October poll said salary transparency helped avoid disappointment, while 42 per cent said it saved them time and effort.
Three-quarters of respondents said they were more likely to apply for a job that listed a salary range.
"If you're going to change jobs, it is most likely going to be to get a pay rise," Brown said.
"If organisations aren't providing that information … you get many, many applicants, many of whom may not even be interested in the job because it doesn't pay a lot, and so that puts a lot of pressure on organisations to sort through large numbers of applications, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of resources."
Excluding salary information on job ads could also change a candidate's perception of the hiring company, Brown said.
"Job applicants often see it as being evidence that the company is going to be trustworthy, that they know what the job is, they know what the expectations of the job and that they're going to be treated fairly – and people are more likely, as those numbers show, to apply," she said.
Regulating hiring practices
Several US states have introduced laws requiring job ads to include a salary range, with mixed results.
"The salary range is the sort of sweet spot between the interests of employers and employees, as long as the range is not ridiculously wide," Brown said.
Brown said she believed Australia's would encourage more employers to include salary on job ads, without the need for regulation.
"It's possible that as people begin to start talking, they're going to realise that the new person is getting paid more than an existing person, and so there'll be pressure on organisations to be a little bit more effective in their communications when people are being hired because it's going to be harder to hide discrepancies," she said.
Fiona MacDonald, policy director for industrial and social at the Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work, agreed that increased discussions around salary as a result of the pay secrecy laws could lead to greater transparency in job ads.
But she said simultaneous regulation was also "a really good idea".
"I think it's important for promoting equality … research shows clearly that it produces fairer outcomes," she said, particularly for disadvantaged workers like women and migrants," she said.
"If they apply for a job and they're asked what their current pay is, the new potential employer will set their pay at their previous rate, so they end up with a kind of longer-term pay disadvantage throughout their career."
It would also give workers a better basis to negotiate, MacDonald said.
"We know that women, in particular, may not be as confident around bargaining for higher pay when they're commencing a job, so if they've got an idea of what the employer is going to pay, that gives them a much better starting point."
