On 5 November the Prime Minister’s Office announced that the UK government will make it a legal requirement for employers to publish salaries in job adverts. No bill has been published, and the release leaves scope, required information, implementation and enforcement for later. Employers have a policy direction and no rulebook, which is the position HR teams and the systems that post their vacancies now have to plan around.
What the government has said, and what it has left open
The press release from the Prime Minister’s Office and Prime Minister Andy Burnham says the government “will mandate job adverts to ‘say what you pay’ by making publishing salaries a legal requirement” and promises legislation “as soon as possible”. It also asks all businesses to publish pay on job ads now, without waiting for the law to change.
The release gives two reasons. The first is jobseekers, particularly young people applying for a first job, who can be asked to apply without knowing what the role pays. The second is pay inequality: it says hiding pay details disadvantages women by forcing them to negotiate blind. Burnham said: “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. That’s why we will make it a legal requirement for all employers to say what you pay.”
The release also reports early analysis of a government consultation, which found 94% of respondents backing the requirement, including 93% of businesses. It does not give the number of respondents or the consultation’s title, so the figure is the government’s summary of its own exercise.
A short note at the foot of the release sets out what remains undecided. The government will bring forward legislation to require salary information on job adverts, “with further details on scope, required information, implementation, and enforcement to be set out in due course.” Four things are therefore open: which employers are covered, whether an advert must carry a range or a single figure, how the rule will be implemented and who will enforce it. The release also says further reforms will follow the final report of the Milburn Review into youth inactivity, due in the coming weeks, so the wider package is still moving.
How far UK employers have to travel
The release puts a number on the starting position. It estimates that less than half of employers (41%) always publish salary ranges and only 1 in 5 (18%) always publish specific salaries. Its notes attribute both figures to the CIPD’s Pay, performance and transparency report from 2024, page 30.
That CIPD report, published in February 2024 with YouGov fieldwork and a base of 832 respondents, shows how uneven the picture is by sector. Among private sector respondents, 53% always or sometimes publish salary ranges in external job adverts and 29% always or sometimes publish specific salaries. In the public sector the figures are 92% and 60%. In the voluntary sector they are 83% and 75%. Across all respondents, 24% said they publish neither a range nor a specific salary, and the report says that is particularly common in the private sector (31%).
Two cautions apply. The survey is more than two years old, and the report itself notes that some employers not yet publishing planned to do so. The figures describe a baseline from early 2024 and say nothing firm about practice today. Even so, they show where the change lands: the private sector has the largest gap between its practice and a mandatory rule.
For the labour-market backdrop, see our earlier report on UK vacancies falling to 691,000.
What the EU already requires, and what the UK has not yet said
The nearest working template is the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive. Directive (EU) 2023/970 gives applicants for employment the right to receive, from the prospective employer, information about the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria. Article 5 says the information must be provided “in a manner such as to ensure an informed and transparent negotiation on pay, such as in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise.” The same article bars employers from asking applicants about their pay history, and requires job vacancy notices and job titles to be gender-neutral. Member States were due to bring in the necessary laws by 7 June 2026.
Three differences between the EU text and the UK announcement matter for planning. The EU gives the employer a choice of channel: a published notice, or the information before the interview. The UK release speaks only of job adverts. The EU text allows an initial pay “or its range”, while the UK release has not said whether a range will satisfy the rule. And the UK release says nothing about pay history questions, which in the EU are a separate prohibition.
The directive’s recitals address the objection that publishing a figure weakens an employer’s position. They say transparency should enable prospective workers to make an informed decision about the expected salary “without limiting in any way the employer’s or worker’s bargaining power to negotiate a salary even outside the indicated range.” If the UK follows that logic, a published range or figure would be a starting point for negotiation. The release does not say whether it will.
Where the work lands inside HR systems
Most of the effort sits outside the law itself, and in our reading the first change is a data problem, since an advert cannot show a salary that the requisition does not hold. Where a requisition opens with a grade and a budget code and the number is settled later, the advert has nothing to show. A rule that requires a salary at the point of advertising pulls that decision to the start of the process, and it pulls it into whichever system creates the requisition and posts the advert.
That affects at least three places in a typical stack: the requisition form in the HR or applicant tracking system, the syndication step that pushes an advert to job boards and a careers page, and the compensation data that tells a recruiter what a grade is worth. None of the three has to change today, since there is no law to comply with yet. The cheaper time to find out which of them cannot hold a mandatory pay field, or cannot stop an advert going out without one, is before the scope is published.
Aon’s 2026 Pay Transparency Pulse Survey of more than 1,000 HR professionals worldwide shows how often the data is the obstacle. Forty-two percent of employers in the survey say data quality is their primary challenge, and the firm’s write-up of the results says inconsistent job and pay data remain a major barrier. Our own coverage of that survey, Pay Transparency Readiness Gap Widens, Aon Finds, set out the readiness numbers in more detail.
The readiness gap sits with managers
The same Aon survey finds that most of the worry is about people and not penalties. More than 80% of respondents cite manager readiness as a top concern, around two-thirds worry about employee dissatisfaction, and fewer worry about remediation costs (41%) or legal exposure (31%). Fewer than half say their managers are ready for pay conversations.
The UK figure is the sharpest. Aon reports that only 8% of EMEA-based organisations and 2% of UK-based organisations say managers are highly prepared for pay transparency conversations. Anthony Poole, Partner and Industry Sector Leader, Human Capital, Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Aon, said: “Manager conversations are an overlooked factor. Companies need to prepare managers with comprehensive training.”
The reason this belongs in a story about job adverts is sequence. A published salary invites comparison from people already on the payroll. An advert that shows a figure above what a current employee earns will reach that employee, and the first person asked to explain the gap will be a line manager. Aon’s UK figure of 2% suggests few line managers are ready to do that today.
The case for waiting, and why waiting is thin
The strongest argument for waiting is that nothing is binding. The scope is undefined, the required information is undefined, and no start date exists. An employer that rebuilds its requisition process now could find the final rule asks for a range where it built for a single figure, or exempts small employers it has already prepared.
That argument supports delaying software spending. The pay band for each role, the rule for who sets a salary and when, and the training for managers all remain useful under any version of the law, because the government has already said the aim is to make openness about pay “the minimum standard.” The Fawcett Society, which has long campaigned for greater pay transparency, welcomed the decision. Penny East, its Chief Executive, said: “Women will no longer have to make decisions about their financial futures based on vague promises or unclear terms.” The release has not said whether a range will meet that aim or whether a single figure is required.
Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson described the aim in similar terms: what a job pays “shouldn’t be a guessing game,” she said, and mandatory salary information on job adverts would help young people make informed choices and help close the gender pay gap.
What it means for the HR leader
The announcement changes the plan for the next two quarters in four specific ways, none of which depends on the final text.
- Audit the adverts that already exist. Pull the last 90 days of postings and count how many carry a range, a specific salary or nothing. The CIPD figures give a sector benchmark, but only your own count tells you the size of the gap.
- Check whether the requisition holds a pay field. Ask the owner of your HR or applicant tracking system whether a salary or range can be required before an advert is published, and whether the field flows through to job boards and the careers page without manual re-entry.
- Settle who sets pay at the point of opening a role. If compensation currently decides after interviews, name the person who will decide before the advert goes out, and write down the band that decision draws on.
- Train managers before the first published figure. Give line managers a short script for the question an existing employee will ask when they see an advert that pays more than they earn, and agree when the question goes to HR.
Watch for three things from the government in the coming weeks: whether the legislation is attached to an existing bill or introduced separately, whether it names a threshold by employer size, and whether it permits a range. Each of those decides how much of the work above is a rebuild and how much is a configuration change.
Until the text exists, publish pay on the adverts you control, find out which systems cannot hold the field, and put managers through the pay conversation before the pay is public.
Source: GOV.UK, Prime Minister’s Office
