Unpacking Salary Transparency: Analysing Fixed Salaries and Ranges in Job Posts

We recently published a post giving an update on salary transparency in job posts , where we revealed that 44% of job postings gave some salary information in their job post for job seekers.

That post has had thousands of views, and a lot of discussion on both hacker news and reddit over the past few days.

The most common discussion point was around salary ranges. It’s all good and well for companies to post a range, but what if that salary range isn’t particularly insightful or helpful?

Examples from companies like Netflix , show large salary ranges ($150-$750k in this example) - which while may be a true salary range, seemingly goes against the spirit of salary transparency, of levelling the playing field for job seekers.

We decided to dig into the data and analyze salary ranges by category, pay cycle and location and see if there is a potential issue that should be addressed.

For this analysis we are looking at the 44% of job postings that do contain salary information.

Fixed vs Salary Range

47% of advertised salaries are fixed and don't show a range.

For example this job shows a fixed salary of $25 per hour:

And this job that shows a range of $18.48 to $30 an hour:

Salaries are most commonly advertised as either an hourly rate or an annual salary. Is this a factor in whether a job is advertised with a fixed salary or a range?

For jobs with an hourly pay rate specified 59% of jobs have a fixed salary. For jobs with an annual salary specified in their ad, only 40% of jobs have a fixed salary.

When looking at fixed salaries vs salary ranges by job category, we see quite a bit of variance.

Information Technology job postings have the lowest percentage of advertised fixed salaries at 25%, compared to Sales job postings at the other end that have advertised fixed salaries at 66%.

Fixed salaries vs salary ranges broken down by hourly and annual by job category:

And so what about those salary ranges? Are they really that wild and unhelpful?

In order to visualise and compare this data, we converted the range into a percentage of the bottom of the range.

For example if the advertised salary range was $30,000 - $60,000 we would indicate this range to be 100%. If the advertised salary range was $30,000 - $45,000 we would indicate this range to be 50%.

Across all jobs, the average salary range for hourly jobs is 55% and for annual jobs it is 80%.

Breaking this down by job category we see that for annual jobs, Military, Construction and Engineering all have the largest ranges, with an average over 100%. At the other end, we see Hospitality, Agriculture and IT with the tightest ranges averaging around 50%.

Annual jobs range percentage:

It is interesting to see IT fall into this end of the spectrum, given the large amount of discussion around IT salary ranges.

For hourly jobs we see Education, Legal and Management come in with the largest ranges and IT, Security and Sanitation with the tightest salary ranges.

Hourly jobs range percentage:

Are companies in states that require salary information in job posts using ranges to be evasive?

No! With the exception of California, the other 3 states come in under the average salary range of 67% for all jobs in the US. This is a good sign that the laws don't appear to make companies be less specific about salaries

While the appropriate amount of range to provide on a job description is subjective and is also subject to a lot of context about the type of job, and other factors that may be in the job description.

We see that the majority of job categories, ranges are relatively stable between 55% and 80%. Where we see outliers, they appear to deviate quite a bit from the average. A deep dive into these job categories is required to understand why this larger range exists and to determine if it's justified.

Job seekers looking for hourly work have a 20% higher chance of being told up front exactly what the job is paying compared to those looking for jobs that are advertised with an annual salary.

Notes on the data:

The above data is extracted from 5m active job postings, live on DirectlyApply as of 3rd November 2023. DirectlyApply removes all duplicate postings, postings where our AI systems detect there may be fraud, or job postings that don't meet our standards for advertising.

If you want more information about DirectlyApply or our features feel free to reach out to Dylan  or  Will  on Linkedin or email:  [email protected]