By Daniel Hunter
New research from job search engine Adzuna.co.uk reveals that more than 50% of UK employers do not publish salaries in their job advertisements.
Google, HSBC and Ernst & Young are the country’s least transparent employers, almost never publishing a salary in the ads analysed by Adzuna.
Property and Healthcare employers are the most transparent with more than 90% of job ads listing a wage, but Energy and Executive sectors are the least forthcoming, with up to 80% of ads in these sectors missing this crucial data.
Adzuna analysed salary data for over 500,000 UK job ads from its search index in August - almost every UK job ad - to determine how salary disclosure differs by sector, company and location. Adzuna then incorporated data from their Jobsworth salary prediction system, which produces a salary estimate for every job ad with no advertised wage, to complete the overall picture.
Key Research Findings:
- Currently over 250,000 live UK job ads do not disclose salaries. Some employers are becoming increasingly reticent when it comes to publishing pay information - with excuses given including falling salaries, use of recruitment consultants, fear of disclosing salaries to competitors or current staff, and wide pay ranges for roles.
- More than 40,000 of these roles are located in the guarded City sectors such as Finance, Engineering and IT. The data shows that the average Banking IT salary is £54,000 and the average City Engineering role pays £68,000 p.a.
- Over 98% of analysed roles at top employers like Google, HSBC and Ernst & Young, do not disclose any wage information, with RBS, the Royal Mail and Vodafone all in the top ten offenders. At the other end of the scale, Nandos and Tesco are among the most transparent employers.
- Employers in the Property Sector are most open about proposed wages - 92% of ads show advertised salary - as the need to entice staff with attractive pay and bonuses is high. Wages can reach up to £50k p.a. for Property Manager roles. Other service sectors like Advertising and Healthcare also show strong transparency, so it is no surprise that service industries are driving GDP growth.
- Scotland is the region in the UK for not disclosing advertised salary with 42% of ads missing this vital information. Aberdeen, Glasgow and Belfast are the most secretive cities, while Southend-on-Sea and Crawley are the most transparent.
- It’s also bad news for Graduates and school leavers with as few as 20% of Graduate roles and Part Time positions advertising salaries.
- Adzuna Jobsworth salary prediction data shows that employers in the Energy sector are the best payers and Domestic & Cleaning are the worst overall. It also reveals a correlation between lower paying industries and employers not publishing salaries. Employers in the Domestic & Cleaning sector are unsurprisingly secretive about average wages of only £13,800 p.a.
“It is amazing in the 21st century that 50% of employers still don't put salaries in their job ads, putting candidates off applying for these roles and making the job market less efficient," Flora Lowther, head of research at Adzuna.co.uk, commented.
"Adzuna gives all jobseekers the information they need with our pay prediction tool Jobsworth, which shows a salary against every job ad even if the employer doesn’t. We believe that job seekers have a right to know what pay to expect."
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