These Are The Jobs Least Likely To Include Pay Ranges In Employment Ads

A new analysis found that higher wage professions like banking have lower rates of pay transparency—but also that state and local laws mandating pay ranges in job ads are having an outsized impact, even in places where it’s not required.

In November, New York City—that mecca of major banks and investment firms—began requiring employers to include salary ranges in job ads. But four months later, despite rapid growth in the percentage of job ads in the field disclosing pay, it still remains one of the least transparent occupational groups when it comes to posting salary ranges, according to a new analysis of job postings.

Just under 32% of banking and finance job postings include pay scales, according to the analysis by jobs site Indeed. That’s up significantly from just a year prior, when less than 12% of banking and finance job postings included pay ranges before New York City’s law and other state mandates went into effect. But it’s still among the least transparent occupational groups when it comes to pay ranges in job postings: Others with low transparency tend to also be higher wage job categories, such as scientific research and development and management (each 33%) and chemical and industrial engineering (each 31%), all of which also had substantially lower rates of disclosure just a year ago.

Indeed’s analysis underscores how effective such laws have been at helping close the information gap in high-wage and traditionally male-dominated professions, giving job seekers more transparency for negotiating equitable pay—but also how much further they still have to go. Job categories that are most transparent, Indeed’s analysis found, tend to be in lower-wage positions, some of which are in female-dominated industries, such as childcare (76% of job postings now advertise salaries) and home health and personal care (62%).

“We really think pay transparency is a critical part of promoting equal pay and equal work,” said Cory Stahle, an economist with Indeed’s Hiring Lab. “What we found highlights that these regulations are leading to a lot of growth.”

The analysis found that the mandates, which have passed in just four states and five local jurisdictions, are having an outsized impact. Over the past three years, the number of job ads that share salary ranges across industries has more than doubled and is nearing half of all job listings as companies adopt national policies for disclosure, a wave of additional states propose similar laws and remote work prompts the practice to proliferate.

Nearly 44% of U.S. job postings included salary ranges in February, up from just 18% in the same month of 2020, according to the Indeed analysis. During those three years, laws requiring the disclosure of pay ranges in job ads in major employment centers such as California, New York City and Washington state went into effect. In response, a growing number of large employers such as Microsoft and Citigroup have adopted national policies, even for jobs in places where it’s not mandated, which can make things simpler for H.R. teams and more equitable for candidates.

The increasing percentage of job postings that include salary ranges is also likely due to the proliferation of states proposing similar laws and employers’ hiring of remote workers. Employers that have at least some workers in jurisdictions with laws mandating salary ranges are sometimes required to also post them for jobs that allow remote hires, spreading the practice. In addition, there are bills pending this year that would require pay scales in job postings in at least 11 more states or jurisdictions, including Connecticut, Hawaii and Massachusetts.

No surprise, then, that many of the metro areas that have seen the fastest growth of the practice—but aren’t yet governed by laws requiring disclosure —include Honolulu (where the year-over-year growth in the share of job postings advertising pay is 77%), Bridgeport-Stamford, Conn. (63%) and Boston (62%). “It looks like employers start adapting before the law even goes into place,” Stahle says.

The southeastern United States, meanwhile, where there are no disclosure mandates and fewer laws pending, account for nearly all of the top metro areas with the lowest share of pay scale disclosure, Indeed found.

Compensation experts say it’s not surprising that high-wage occupations like banking or scientific research still have lower rates of transparency, despite how much pay scale disclosure has grown over the past year. For one, says Roger Lee, co-founder of compensation review software platform Comprehensive, pay in certain industries like finance and tech has long been more discretionary, whereas in lower wage jobs, pay is more fixed and has long been disclosed. “It’s easier for industries to be compliant with pay transparency if they’re essentially already there,” he says.

Christine Hendrickson, vice president of strategic initiatives at Syndio, which conducts pay equity analyses for corporations, agrees, noting the wider ranges mean it’s challenging for employers to reach what consultants are calling “pay explainability,” or a narrative employers can share with workers about how they’re setting pay. “A 30% spread on a $12 an hour job is a lot smaller of a range than it is at a job that pays $150,000 or $200,000,” she notes.

“Transparency is a muscle that employers are building,” she says. “They may have a firmer grasp around how to communicate about jobs where the range is tighter, as is often the case with lower paid roles. For more senior and more higher paid roles, it takes a little more planning and maturity.”

Still, making pay ranges public is a strategy more companies are likely to emphasize, not only to comply with laws, but as evidence surfaces that equitable pay helps with retention, perhaps even more than higher pay itself. A new analysis by human resources industry analyst Josh Bersin found that on a list of 84 strategies for improving employees’ experience, fair and equitable rewards ranked fifth for its impact on worker retention, while paying high compensation and benefits came in 75th.