Pay Information in Job Ads: What Should You Actually Publish?
Michelle Dervan
18 May 2026
• 4 minute read
In a previous article we looked at whether employers will need to publish pay information in job ads under the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and how member states are approaching this differently.
This article picks up where that one left off; assuming you need to publish pay information in your job ads, what pay information should you include?
This is one of the most common questions we get and it is not as straightforward as it might seem.
Let's start with what Article 5 of the Directive actually states: employers must provide applicants with information about "the initial pay or its range" for the position.
The Directive explicitly permits either an initial pay figure or a pay range. That choice is a consequential one for employers. Each option comes with tradeoffs worth considering before you decide.
Option 1: Publish a Pay Range
Pay transparency laws for job seekers were introduced in US states in recent years and some employers responded by publishing extremely wide ranges. Netflix advertised a software engineer role at $90,000 to $900,000. Tesla posted $83,000 to $418,000 for a senior software engineer. The implicit logic was that a broad range satisfies the letter of the law while preserving maximum flexibility for employers.
We do not recommend this approach for several reasons:
Wide ranges evade the spirit of pay transparency which is to give candidates genuinely useful information about expected pay. Regulators are clapping down on this in the US; California has restricted excessively broad ranges, and New Jersey introduced legislation capping range width at 60% of the minimum salary. There is little reason to expect EU regulators to take a more permissive approach.
Research published in the Harvard Business Review in February 2026, drawing on nearly 10 million US job postings, found that wide ranges deter women from applying. Researchers argue that the driver is financial uncertainty about where a candidate will actually land.
It is worth being honest about why some employers publish extremely wide ranges. Often it is because they do not have a pay framework in place that would allow them to publish something more specific with confidence. A wide range is a visible indicator that the underlying work on job architecture and pay ranges has not yet been done.
If you are going to publish a range, keep it tight.
A common way to construct a meaningful range is to take approximately ±20% around the target budget for the role. A range constructed in this way is informative to candidates and gives hiring managers a consistent framework, which reduces the risk of pay decisions varying significantly in ways that are hard to explain later.
The main practical risk with any range is anchoring: candidates will tend to gravitate toward the top of whatever range is given and this can drive up salary costs over time.
Option 2: Publish an Initial Pay Figure (Rather Than a Pay Range)
This option is less commonly discussed but is explicitly permitted under Article 5. In practice it means publishing a typical initial pay figure for the role alongside the objective criteria that will determine where an individual offer lands.
For example:
For candidates who meet the core requirements for this role, the initial pay is typically around €65,000. The exact offer will be determined using objective, gender-neutral criteria such as years of relevant experience, specific skills, and qualifications for the role.
The case for it
The HBR research tested almost exactly this approach and found it effectively eliminated the gender gap in application rates that wide ranges produce. It gives candidates a realistic anchor for expected pay, signals that pay decisions are structured rather than discretionary, and aligns closely with what the Directive is designed to achieve — eliminating the information asymmetry between employers and candidates on pay.
The case against it
This approach requires solid foundations. The initial pay figure needs to be representative of what most qualifying candidates will actually be offered — not a floor that the employer fully departs from in practice. The criteria used internally for positioning actual offers in relation to the stated figure need to be objective and applied consistently. For example, candidates new to this role with 0-2 years experience will be positioned at the published starting pay figure, those with 3-5 years of experience will be positioned at the midpoint and those experienced in the role 6+ years of experience will be positioned at the maximum. Without clear positioning logic, this option is hard to defend.
One More Thing: What Does "Pay" Actually Mean?
The Directive defines "pay" broadly — beyond base salary to include complementary components, both cash and in kind. All of these need to be reflected in what you publish.
In practice, a compliant job ad entry will include all relevant pay components for the job. For example:
Senior Marketing Manager | Dublin (Hybrid)
Typical starting base pay: €65,000
Typical Performance bonus: up to 10% of annual salary | Employer pension: 5% | Car allowance: €5,000 per year | Stock options: available after one year | 30 days annual leave plus public holidays
Listing base pay alone and leaving everything else to the offer stage will not be sufficient.
The Bottom Line
The figure or range you publish in a job ad is only as credible as the pay framework behind it. These are three key things to act on before you publish:
Do the foundational work first. The Directive requires pay structures to be based on objective, gender-neutral criteria — covering skills, effort, responsibility, and working conditions — that enable meaningful comparison of roles across your organisation. Without that foundation, any figure or range you publish is difficult to defend and hard to apply consistently.
Check your internal pay equity. Your existing employees will see what you advertise and compare it to their own pay. Make sure the figure or range you publish is consistent with what you currently pay people in equivalent roles. Run a pay gap audit per job category now before you start to publish pay information.
Remember what this is for. Pay transparency is not just a compliance exercise. Done properly, it is an opportunity to demonstrate that your approach to pay is fair and clear which is increasingly what candidates and employees expect.
If you are still working through the foundational steps of job architecture and auditing pay gaps, check out these helpful articles on what the groundwork involves.
How do I implement pay transparency effectively in a smaller organisation
How to Quality Check Your Job Architecture for EU Pay Transparency
SkillsTrust helps organisations across Europe build the job architecture and pay frameworks needed to meet their obligations under the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Get in touch to find out more.
