Partner Article

Half of employers don’t advertise a salary in job ads

Is there anything more frustrating than not knowing what salary to expect from advertised vacancies - how can you tell which jobs fit your aspirations?

Thanks to listing every vacancy in the UK - over 500,000 - Adzuna is able to expose the fact that more than 50% of UK employers do not publish salaries in their job advertisements. We have analysed salary data for almost every UK job ad to determine how salary disclosure differs by sector, company and location.

We then incorporated data from our Jobsworth salary prediction system, which produces a salary estimate for every job ad with no advertised wage, to complete the overall picture. Detective Adzuna investigates:

Charges against UK employment market:

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.

Most cryptic job ads found in the City - 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.

Most guilty employers - 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.

Sector sector sector - 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.

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.

Break it down regionally - 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 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. 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.

About Jobsworth

Adzuna’s Jobsworth salary prediction system produces a salary estimate for every job ad with no advertised wage and publishes it on the website, using advanced data science techniques. In tests, our estimates are within 10% the vast majority of the time. This results in job seekers knowing what pay to expect and ultimately a better job search experience.

How it works:

1. We analyse over 500,000 UK job ads on a daily basis to understand current salary trends based on keywords, categories, companies and locations.

2. Our neural network-based system then produces a Jobsworth salary estimate for every ad with no advertised salary. In tests, we’re within 10% the vast majority of the time - and getting better every day.

3. This all results in job seekers knowing what salary to expect, and ultimately a better job search experience.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Adzuna .