Key points:
- Salary transparency has risen across Europe but recently levelled off.
- At the end of 2024, more than two-thirds of job postings in the United Kingdom included salary information, the most among all countries analysed. At the same time, fewer than 20% of German and Italian postings were pay-transparent.
- Jobs in cleaning & sanitation and driving jobs are the most transparent across countries, while industrial engineering and software development have the smallest share of transparent postings across Europe.
- Low-wage jobs are generally more transparent than high-wage jobs.
Salary transparency — an important stepping stone toward pay equity across ethnicity, gender, and other dividing lines — has advanced significantly across Europe over the past six years. Regardless of their starting points, there has been noticeable progress in the inclusion of salary information in job postings in each of the half-dozen European nations recently analysed by Hiring Lab. Still, transparency has recently levelled off, and significant differences prevail across countries in advance of upcoming transparency legislation.
Indeed, a growing wave of salary transparency legislation is being introduced and adopted across many advanced economies. The EU Pay Transparency Directive, adopted in 2023, will compel European employers to share salary details early in the recruitment process, either directly in the job posting or before the interview. Member states must transpose these rules into national law by June 2026, but to date, no EU member state has done so. As a result, upfront salary disclosure remains voluntary across the EU (except in Austria, where stricter transparency rules are already in place), and adoption of the practice varies widely within Europe. At the end of 2024, only about 1-in-6 job postings in Germany contained salary information, compared to more than two-thirds of postings in the UK.
Providing clear and upfront information on salaries has a range of benefits for employers: It can streamline the hiring process by reducing time spent on wage negotiations and can help attract a broader candidate pool, particularly in competitive labour markets. Additionally, salary transparency can foster trust, strengthen employer branding, and enable businesses to address pay disparities proactively, helping mitigate legal and reputational risks. For employees and jobseekers alike, knowing market-aligned salary ranges sets realistic expectations, empowers negotiation, and mitigates information asymmetry between employers and candidates. This, in turn, promotes fairer labour market outcomes and can enhance job satisfaction and retention.
Salary transparency has progressed in Europe
Among the six European nations included in this analysis, salary transparency as of the end of 2024 was highest in the UK, with 69.7% of all job postings on Indeed mentioning salary information. Germany (15.8%) and Italy (19.3%) were clear laggards. In Ireland, France, and the Netherlands, around 40% to just over 50% of job postings included salary data at the end of last year — significant progress, but still not the norm.
In addition, progress made across Europe between 2019 and 2023 has stalled over the past 12–18 months, indicating a slowdown in efforts to share salary information. This stagnation suggests that initial momentum — possibly driven by heightened transparency debates, regulatory discussions, and a tighter labour market — has waned. With the EU Pay Transparency Directive set to take effect in 2026, it remains to be seen whether upcoming legal requirements will reignite progress or if employers will continue to take a wait-and-see approach.
However, “transparency” does not have to entail simply stating a proposed annual salary or salary range. For instance, in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, many job postings do not explicitly state a salary, but refer applicants to publicly available information on collective bargaining agreements that fix salaries and working conditions for some roles. Including such postings in our analysis raises the share of nominally “transparent” postings to 49.7% in the Netherlands, 23.7% in Germany, and 23.3% in Italy, with only a minor impact on the ranking.
Salary transparency is lowest in high-paid occupations
The degree to which employers disclose salaries differs strongly across occupational categories. The most transparent category across the six countries as of the end of last year was cleaning & sanitation, ranging from 20% of postings in Italy to 92% in the UK. Additional categories with relatively high shares of postings with salary information include driving (between 30 % in Italy and 84 % in the UK), education & instruction (from 22 % in Germany to 85 % in the United Kingdom) and food preparation & services (between 17 % in Germany and 78 % in the United Kingdom). Jobs in industrial engineering, software development, information design & documentation, project management, and law were the least transparent. In Italy, Germany, and Ireland, fewer than 10% of postings in these sectors included salary information (except for project management in Ireland, where the share was slightly higher at 13%). In the other three countries, at least a quarter of postings across those same categories were pay-transparent at the end of 2024.
This observation points to a wider phenomenon: Employers in high-wage industries seem less inclined to disclose salaries. This pattern emerges across almost all countries considered here, with the exception of the Netherlands. Why are employers more tight-lipped about pay for higher-paying roles? They may withhold salary details for competitive reasons or because they expect pay to be negotiated based on qualifications and experience. High-level, complex roles tend to be more difficult to value, leaving still more room for negotiation. Even so, the opacity around salaries in these sectors can contribute to a lack of clarity for jobseekers, making it difficult for them to assess whether positions align with their salary needs or expectations before applying.
Coincidentally, research shows that gender pay gaps tend to be higher in higher-paid, professional occupations and in those predominantly occupied by men. In the UK, the median gender pay gap among full-time managers, directors, senior officials and associate professional occupations is higher than the national average. In Germany, the unadjusted gender pay gap (without controlling for some workers’ tendencies to self-select into certain industries over others) is highest among employees engaged in complex, specialised experts’ work. In France, the gender gap based on full-time equivalents is highest among executives (“cadres”) and increases with the age of the employees.
Conclusion
Addressing salary opacity at the top of the wage distribution — a main goal of regulators, alongside closing existing gaps in pay equity — could help ensure fairer compensation practices. Transparency could also level the playing field for underrepresented groups, giving them better insights to advocate for equitable pay. As more countries adopt transparency measures, these shifts may ultimately challenge deeply entrenched norms around wage secrecy and negotiation in high-wage industries. Various countries have implemented their own measures to address pay inequities and promote gender equality. But many of these initiatives still rely on voluntary compliance, lack enforcement mechanisms, and/or stop short of mandating full transparency upfront. Whether the EU directive will bring more transparency remains to be seen, and we will continue to observe this trend closely.
Methodology
We calculate the pay transparency share in job postings by dividing the number of unique job postings with a salary by the total number of unique advertisements in a given month. Pay information is extracted from postings published on Indeed.
The heatmap only includes occupational categories with more than 100 observations across all countries.
The wage tiers are assigned based on the median salary of each occupational group in 2023 and are kept constant over time. The ‘low wage’ salary group is the lower tercile of the distribution, the ‘middle-wage’ group is the middle tercile, and the ‘high wage’ group is the third tercile.
