Salary ranges in all job adverts are bad for job seekers? Or are they just bad for employers?

Dear MoreThanCareer.de community,

On Monday I asked you a simple question in a LinkedIn poll: "Should salary ranges become mandatory by law under job adverts in CH & EU?" By Tuesday afternoon, 294 of you had voted, and the result looks like an election in a country with only one party:

• "Yes, absolutely": 259 votes (88%)
• "Before first interview is ok": 14 votes (5%)
• "I am not sure": 13 votes (4%)
• "No, it doesn't help anything": 8 votes (3%)

Eight people. I would love to meet the brave eight, ideally across a negotiating table, with the budget written on my side of the notepad and not on theirs. The option that matches what the EU Directive actually requires, the number before the first interview, won 14 votes. That is fewer than the comments the post collected. Brussels spent three years drafting a compromise that fewer than one in twenty of you would choose.

The poll is still open for six more days. So this article is my own answer, with footnotes, because a poll gives you opinions and a footnote gives you receipts.

Save this article now. Bookmark it, or tattoo the footnotes on your forearm if HR allows visible ink. The next time a recruiter asks for your "salary expectations" in the first call while guarding their own number like a state secret with a pension plan, you will want the figures below within reach.

A word on who is writing. I spent seventeen years in recruitment, the last nine at Bayer and the five before that at ICON and Syneos, so I know the view from the side of the table that holds the budget while the candidate plays charades. Today I help pharma professionals in Europe and the US get hired, with especially deep roots in the DACH market: career coaching (job search strategy, interview preparation, salary negotiation training with tailored scripts), Reverse Recruitment, and CV and LinkedIn rewrites and rebranding. The overview lives at www.morethancareer.de. Conflict of interest declared: if every advert showed the salary, part of my negotiation training would lose its air of dark magic. I would sign that deal tonight, preferably with the number written on it.

The job advert, a German love story

Here is the standard advert, translated faithfully. We are still looking for the eierlegende Wollmilchsau (the egg-laying wool-milk-sow: one animal that delivers eggs, wool, milk and bacon), who has been on the run since my post about her in May. Master's degree, doctorate preferred, eight years of experience, age 29, fluent in four languages, one of them SAP. In return we offer "attraktive Vergütung" (attractive remuneration), a young team, flat hierarchies and an Obstkorb (fruit basket). The only item in the whole advert with a visible price is the fruit basket, and that price is zero.

Über Geld spricht man nicht (one does not talk about money). In Germany this started as table manners. The job advert turned it into a business model.

The comedy writes itself once you check the legislation. German law requires a supermarket to show the price of a pot of yoghurt and, next to it, the price per kilogram, clearly and legibly.¹ A job that consumes most of your waking life and a measurable share of your hair requires no price at all. You can compare yoghurts to the cent. You cannot compare employers to the nearest ten thousand euros. Somewhere in Brussels a consumer protection official is quietly weeping into a strawberry Fruchtzwerg.

The sentence of the year comes from London

On 14th July 2026 the UK government opened a consultation on equal pay and wrote this, with a straight face, into an official document: "most employers already publish pay ranges voluntarily."²

Two months earlier Adzuna had analysed more than ten million UK job adverts. Salary information appeared in 43.74% of them, down from 64.6% in 2016, after the steepest annual fall in recent years.³ Das kannst du deiner Oma erzählen (tell that to your grandmother: pull the other one). In Whitehall, "most" apparently means "a little fewer every year, but with conviction".

Indeed counts differently and puts the UK at 60% for July 2026.⁴ Call it a draw between optimism and arithmetic, with arithmetic appealing. The proposal itself has teeth, at least on paper: pay information in every job advert, or in writing before the interview where no advert exists, with details "for example, the size of a salary range" left for later regulations.² The consultation closes on 27th October 2026. Keep the date. It returns in the cheat sheet like an ex at a wedding.

Europe: a continent of heroic intentions and missed deadlines

The EU Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants the right to the starting pay or its range, delivered "such as in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise."⁵ Those two little words, "or otherwise", carry more furniture than a removal van in September. The Directive guarantees you the number in time to negotiate. Whether it appears in the advert is left to each country, and here the map turns into a sitcom.

The deadline was 7th June 2026. By early September, five of twenty-seven member states had fully transposed it.⁴ In a German school that result earns a blauer Brief (blue letter: the formal warning to your parents that you may have to repeat the year).

Italy did the unthinkable and read the Directive. Legislative Decree 96/2026 took effect on 7th June 2026 and requires the starting salary or salary band in job adverts, plus a ban on asking about previous pay, including through agencies.⁶ Indeed's data: 26% of Italian postings showed pay in July 2025, 61% in July 2026, overtaking the UK for the first time.⁴ Da wird der Hund in der Pfanne verrückt (the dog goes mad in the frying pan: I cannot believe it). Rome published salaries while Berlin was still looking for the pen.

France woke up five days ago. On 10th September 2026 the government presented a bill requiring the salary range "au moment de la publication de l'offre d'emploi" (at the moment the job advert is published), plus a ban on asking about pay history.⁷ Alter Schwede (old Swede, which in German means: well, look at that). Paris, of all places, may end up telling Berlin what a job pays.

Poland, the Netherlands and Ireland: three elegant ways to say "later"

Poland moved early, and its employers then read the small print with the concentration of a tax adviser in April. Since 24th December 2025, employers must give candidates the starting pay or range "either in job advertisements or, at the latest, before the interview or the employment agreement is concluded", job titles must be gender-neutral, and asking about previous pay is banned.⁸ Offered the choice between "in the advert" and "or", a good number of employers seem to have picked "or" before the sentence had finished. In IT, the share of adverts with a salary range on justjoin.it and rocketjobs.pl fell from 58.4% to 54.4% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, while other sectors crept up from 34.4% to 35.4%.⁹ A pay law arrives, and the one sector that was already publishing ranges publishes fewer. Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy (Polish: not my circus, not my monkeys).

The Netherlands asked Brussels for more time. On 18th December 2025 the European Commission said no.¹⁰ The Dutch bill now targets 1st January 2027 regardless, and according to L&E Global it contains no obligation to put pay in the advert, only before salary negotiations.¹¹ Brussels said "no", The Hague heard "not yet". The comedy is in the market: 49.5% of Dutch postings on Indeed showed pay in July 2026 without any national law forcing it, more than three times the German share.⁴ Dutch employers publish salaries voluntarily while their government negotiates for extra time to make them.

Ireland missed the June deadline too. Its General Scheme, the outline of the future bill, would put the salary or range into the advert itself, which goes further than the Directive.¹² Of the six countries Indeed surveyed, the Irish want this most: 82% of Irish respondents said a range makes them more likely to apply, the highest share measured, while only 39% of Irish postings showed pay in spring 2026.¹³ Add Greenhouse's finding that 66% of candidates in Ireland report being ghosted.¹⁴ It is entirely possible to be ignored by an employer whose salary you never learned. Twice. Before lunch.

DACH: one veteran, one patient in a waiting room

Austria has been doing this since 1st March 2011, which in HR years is roughly the Bronze Age. Adverts must state the collectively agreed minimum pay and mention whether the employer is willing to pay more. A first breach earns a warning, later ones a fine of up to €360.¹⁵ At €360 a fine stops being a punishment and becomes a tip. On karriere.at in 2025, 8% of adverts carried no pay at all, 78% named a minimum and only 14% gave a real range from minimum to maximum.¹⁶ So 78% of Austrian employers announce the legal floor, which is roughly like a restaurant printing the price of tap water and inviting you to guess the steak. That is Wiener Schmäh (Viennese charm: the art of telling you nothing so warmly that you say thank you).

Germany deserves its own paragraph, mostly for humanitarian reasons. The deadline passed on 7th June. There is still no government bill, and Euronews reports implementation delayed until early 2027.⁴ In Berlin it is Tote Hose (dead trousers: absolutely nothing happening), and the bill may arrive on Sankt Nimmerleinstag (Saint Never's Day: the date that never comes). On 8th September 2026 Die Linke tabled a Bundestag motion asking the government, politely, to finally present a draft.¹⁷ I searched its five pages for "Stellenanzeige", "Stellenausschreibung" and "Bewerbung" (job advert, job posting, application). Zero hits. Even the motion pushing hardest for strict implementation does not ask for the salary in the advert. When the opposition's wish list and the government's to-do list agree on silence, you have found true German consensus.

The result shows up on Indeed: 14% of German postings displayed pay in July 2026.⁴ In Indeed's breakdown for the end of 2024, cleaning was the German occupational group most likely to show pay, at 41%, while software development, data analytics, project management and legal mostly sat below 10% in Germany and Italy.¹⁸ A cleaner in Cologne learns the pay before a data scientist in Leverkusen does. The better the job pays, the more the advert whispers, until senior roles communicate exclusively through interpretive dance.

Switzerland: publicly available, just not where you look

Switzerland is outside the EU and has no legal requirement at all.¹⁹ In December 2022, National Councillor Min Li Marti asked for the expected salary or band in every job advert of the federal administration and federally owned companies. The Federal Council replied that its own salary table "ist im Internet publiziert und somit für alle einsehbar" (is published on the internet and therefore visible to everyone), and then explained that naming the pay class in a job advert "kann missverständlich sein" (can be misleading). The National Council rejected the motion on 19th September 2023, 106 votes to 82.²⁰

Read that slowly. The federal pay table is public and harmless on its own website. It becomes dangerously misleading the moment somebody places it next to a vacancy, like a cat that is perfectly calm until it sees a cucumber. Openness, Bern edition: available on request, at a different address. Der Amtsschimmel wiehert (the office horse neighs: bureaucracy is in full voice).

The private sector joined the choir. On jobs.ch, 10% of adverts carried pay in 2024, and 86% of Swiss companies surveyed did not expect to add it in future.²¹ Meanwhile, 86% of job seekers in Germany say they apply more readily when an advert shows pay.²² Eighty-six stares at eighty-six across the Rhine, and neither side blinks. An economist would call it a market failure. Swiss HR would call it discretion.

America: fifty states, one idea, zero coordination

The United States has no federal requirement. The FAR Council withdrew its proposed pay-in-postings rule for federal contractors in January 2025.²³ So the states took over, each with its own penalties and its own lawyers. By the count of the Virginia Mercury, 13 states plus Washington, DC now require pay in job postings.²⁴ Colorado went first on 1st January 2021, followed by California and Washington (2023), New York State (September 2023), Hawaii (2024), DC (June 2024), Maryland (October 2024), Illinois and Minnesota (January 2025), New Jersey (June 2025), Vermont (July 2025), Massachusetts (October 2025), Virginia (1st July 2026) and Maine (29th July 2026).²⁵ Connecticut switches from "on request" to "in the advert" on 1st October 2026, Delaware follows in 2027, and New York City has run its own rule since November 2022.²⁶

When Colorado went first, some national employers solved the problem with admirable creativity: remote job adverts that excluded Colorado residents. Remote work, available anywhere on Earth, including Antarctica and low orbit, except Denver. Colorado's director of labor standards, Scott Moss, called it "puzzling".²⁷ A Schildbürgerstreich (a prank worthy of the fictional townsfolk of Schilda, who built a town hall without windows and tried to carry the sunlight in with sacks). Colorado has since taken the view that such postings remain covered anyway.²⁸ The sacks, it turns out, had holes.

Across the border, Ontario has required pay in adverts from employers with 25 or more staff since 1st January 2026, with ranges capped at $50,000 wide, and postings with pay jumped from 49% to 71% by June.²⁹³⁰ One detail for the executives: roles paying more than $200,000 are exempt.²⁹ The legislature opened the books for the whole payroll except the people who write the payroll.

What actually happened when they did it

Wages went up. A little. After Colorado's law, the share of postings with salary information rose by 30 percentage points, and wages rose by 1.3% to 3.6% across three datasets, with "no impacts on pay dispersion, employment, the number of postings, or skill and education requirements."³¹ The predicted apocalypse did not show up, and Colorado's HR directors were last seen alive and well, updating spreadsheets. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist des Talers nicht wert (whoever does not respect the penny is not worth the thaler). On a €70,000 package, 3% is €2,100 a year, every year, compounding into your next offer.

Applicants sorted themselves like shoppers at a sale. A randomised experiment on Pakistan's largest job platform found that mandatory pay disclosure raised applications by 49%, by 66% at large firms, while the share of applicants meeting the skill criteria at large firms fell by 6%.³² A second field experiment with real vacancies found no change in average application volume at all: high-wage vacancies gained applicants, low-wage vacancies lost them.³³ Mit Speck fängt man Mäuse (with bacon you catch mice). Put the two together and a salary in the advert works like bacon with a price tag. Generous bacon attracts a crowd, including a few mice who cannot read the job description. Stingy bacon clears the room.

Gender gaps moved only under conditions. In Austria, the 2011 rule produced a small overall reduction in the gender wage gap, and a larger one where adverts signalled room to negotiate or to pay above the posted figure: there the gap fell by around 10 percentage points.³⁴ Where that signal was missing, the gap even widened slightly at the lower end.³⁴ A minimum in the advert tells women where the floor is. A hint of space above it tells them the ceiling is negotiable.

Enforcement developed two personalities. Across US states and cities with laws, roughly a quarter of covered listings still lacked salary information, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.³⁵ Colorado's labour department has received 2,984 complaints since 2021 and issued 24 citations. Fines of $841,500 were settled down to $482,450.³⁶ Spread over five and a half years, that is about $85,000 a year of enforcement income for an entire state. That sum would fit comfortably inside many of the ranges it polices. Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter (where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge), goes the German proverb. Colorado had complainants by the thousand and a judge on part-time hours.

Washington State chose the other personality and let applicants sue. Here the plaintiffs arrived by the coachload. More than 250 class actions followed. One Seattle firm filed 75% of them. Eight plaintiffs brought more than 100 suits between them, and by August 2024 total employer liability reached roughly half a billion dollars, according to the Association of Washington Business, which is admittedly about as neutral as a fox reviewing henhouse security.³⁷ Da steppt der Bär (the bear is dancing: the party is on). In September 2025 the state Supreme Court ruled that a plaintiff has to apply, but does not have to prove they were a genuine applicant.³⁸ In theory Hinz und Kunz (Hinz and Kunz, the German Tom, Dick and Harry) could now apply for a job with the sincere career goal of suing it. For employers it became ein Fass ohne Boden (a barrel without a bottom: a money pit). The legislature eventually added a five-day cure period and a sliding scale of $100 to $5,000 in statutory damages.³⁹ The bear now dances more slowly.

Then there is the creative writing department. When New York City's law started in November 2022, Citi advertised a client service role at $0 to $2 million, later corrected to $61,710 to $155,290 after a "technical glitch".⁴⁰ A glitch that happened to cover every possible outcome of human employment, from unpaid intern to minor oligarch. The Wall Street Journal advertised a head of news audio at $140,000 to $450,000.⁴⁰ Ach du dickes Ei (oh you fat egg: good grief). In July 2026 Virginia's own governor, Abigail Spanberger, conceded that a range of $35,000 to $95,000 would still comply with her state's brand-new law.²⁴ That is a range in which one end rents a room and the other buys the building. The boring majority rescues the concept: New York City Council's review of more than 60,000 postings found the maximum was less than double the minimum in "an overwhelming majority" of cases.⁴¹

And the range turned out to be, well, a range. Glassdoor matched 147,568 US job listings to salaries employees actually reported. About two-thirds of posted ranges were accurate, in 22% of listings actual pay sat below the range, and "over 60% of salaries fall below the median of the pay range."⁴² More than one job in five paid less than its own advert, a feat usually reserved for hotel pool photos and dating profiles. The top of the range is the showroom model with leather seats. Most people drive home in the base version with a cassette player. A classic Mogelpackung (a cheat pack: the crisp bag that is mostly air).

Inside the companies, the adverts found a second, less amused audience. In Payscale's 2025 survey, 20% of organisations said employees had left because they saw job postings with higher ranges elsewhere, and 32% reported staff asking more questions about pay.⁴³ Every published range is also a love letter to your own staff, informing them what the newcomer will earn. Some reply with a resignation, in writing, with a smile. Employers in Mercer's global survey nevertheless expect disclosure of hiring ranges in job postings to climb from 60% in 2024 to 94% by the end of 2026.⁴⁴ Nachtigall, ick hör dir trapsen (Berlin dialect: nightingale, I can hear you tiptoeing, meaning I can see exactly what you are up to). Indeed's analysis of Canada and the US found that employer behaviour changed "primarily when specific disclosure laws took effect, not in anticipation of them."¹³ Survey answers are free. Adverts get rewritten when the fine is real.

The honest ledger: pros and cons

For employers, the upside:

• More applications for well-paid roles. JobCloud reports up to 86% more started applications for adverts with pay on its own platform, which is vendor data and should be tasted with a pinch of salt.⁴⁵ The Pakistan experiment found 49% more applications under mandatory disclosure.³²
• Fewer final rounds that die over money. In Greenhouse's survey, 40% of UK candidates said pay expectations did not match the range offered.¹⁴ That is four in ten processes where everybody could have gone home after the first call and watched football.
• A modest bill. Colorado shows wages up 1.3% to 3.6%, with no fall in employment or postings.³¹

For employers, the bill:

• Higher pay. Those 1.3% to 3.6% land in your budget, and your CFO will mention it at the Christmas party.
• Your own staff read adverts, and one employer in five says it has already lost people to higher ranges elsewhere.⁴³
• Competitors read them too. In an employer survey reported in Zoë Cullen's Harvard Business School working paper, a third said they would use other employers' posted ranges for similar jobs when setting their own.⁴⁶ Your salary band becomes their free consultancy report.
• Legal exposure wherever private lawsuits exist, as Washington learned at around half a billion dollars in claimed liability.³⁷
• Crowds with less fit for the attractive roles, such as the 6% drop in skill-matched applicants at large firms.³² Mit Speck fängt man Mäuse, and occasionally rats.

For job seekers, the upside:

• The price before the investment. You'll stop sitting five rounds and a case study for a figure 20% below your current package.
• Slightly higher wages, even for people who were not job hunting, because disclosure sharpened competition between employers in Colorado.³¹
• Better sorting. You can aim at employers who pay, and watch which ones hide behind the fruit basket.
• A ban on salary history questions, which travels in the same package in the EU and in several US states.⁵

For job seekers, the small print:

• Wide ranges tell you roughly as much as a horoscope, and the law in most places still allows them.
• The top of the range is a mirage for most people. Over 60% of salaries sit below the middle.⁴²
• More competition for well-paid adverts, because other applicants can read the number too.³²
• Gender gap effects are weak or conditional. A range helps women mainly when it also signals room to negotiate.³⁴

My verdict: make it mandatory. And bring a ruler.

My opinion, clearly labelled as one: salary ranges belong in job adverts in every EU country, in Switzerland, in the UK and in all fifty US states. Das Kind beim Namen nennen (call the child by its name: say what it is). The evidence shows small wage gains for workers, better matching between people and pay, and no measurable damage to the number of postings or to employment in Colorado. The costs to employers are real. They are the costs of competing openly for talent, which is what the brochure calls "being an employer of choice".

A mandate without a ruler invites the next $0 to $2 million. A sensible law copies the best parts already in circulation. A cap on width, as Ontario has with $50,000.²⁹ A good-faith rule, as California has required since January 2026, meaning the range the employer "reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire".⁴⁷ A short cure period before anyone may sue, which Washington learned the expensive way.³⁹ And no exemption for top earners, whatever Ontario thinks.

One honest caveat for German readers. Many German roles sit inside collective agreements whose pay tables are public anyway, which Indeed cites as one reason German employers see little incentive to post pay.¹³ The silence hurts most in außertarifliche (above the collective agreement) roles, which in my experience covers a large share of professional and management positions in pharma. That is exactly where the advert turns into a mime.

Cheat sheet, part one: how to read a salary range that is actually there

1. Measure the width before you feel anything.

The commodity advice says "check the range fits your expectations". Thank you. Also breathe, and drink water.

The specific action: divide the top by the bottom. Indeed found median annual ranges in UK adverts about 17% wide, for example £30,000 to £35,100.¹³ Up to roughly 25% wide, you are reading one job at one level. Around 50% and above, you are reading two or three levels squeezed into one advert, and your first question to the recruiter is which level they are actually hiring for. A $35,000 to $95,000 range describes an entire career, including the midlife crisis. That width test is my own rule of thumb from recruiting practice. Pi mal Daumen (pi times thumb: a rough estimate that works surprisingly well).

2. Plan to land below the middle, then argue your way up.

Over 60% of the US salaries Glassdoor matched to posted ranges sat below the midpoint.⁴² Treat the midpoint as the ceiling of an unprepared negotiation and the upper third as the target of a prepared one. The preparation is evidence: scope you have already carried, audits you have passed, submissions you have delivered, people you have led, each with a number attached.

3. Find out what the number contains.

Start with gross or net and base or total, then check whether you are looking at twelve salaries or thirteen. In Switzerland, 75.9% of employees receive a 13th monthly salary⁴⁸, and the German chemical and pharmaceutical collective agreement adds an annual payment worth a full monthly salary on top of the tables.⁴⁹ Monthly figure times twelve can understate the package by a month, which is a Milchmädchenrechnung (a milkmaid's calculation: maths that looks fine until reality arrives). Ask whether bonus, car, pension contribution and long-term incentives sit inside or outside the range. A range that includes a target bonus you have a 60% chance of hitting is somebody promising you das Blaue vom Himmel (the blue from the sky).

4. Benchmark the range against numbers the employer did not write.

• Germany: the Entgeltatlas of the Federal Employment Agency, which shows median pay by occupation and region but caps its display at "> 8.050 Euro" per month, so it goes blind exactly where senior pharma roles begin⁵⁰; the interactive pay comparison of the Federal Statistical Office⁵¹; Stepstone's salary report, which puts the median in the pharmaceutical industry at €66,250⁵²; and, where the employer applies the chemical collective agreement, the public IGBCE pay tables.⁴⁹
• Switzerland: Salarium, the salary calculator of the Federal Statistical Office, publicly available and, as far as I know, not yet declared misleading.⁵³
• UK: the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, with a full-time median of £39,039 in 2025.⁵⁴
• US: the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for about 830 occupations.⁵⁵

Three sources that agree are evidence. One source that flatters you is a mood.

5. Ask the two questions that turn a range into a number.

"Where in this range did the last two or three hires for this role land?" and "What separates an offer at the bottom from an offer at the top?" Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2026 found that adding the typical starting salary and the criteria for final offers to a posting reduced the tendency of women to pick narrow ranges and negotiate less.⁵⁶ You can create that information yourself by asking for it. Then get the answer in an email, because verbal promises from a first call shrink faster than wool in a hot wash.

Cheat sheet, part two: what to do when the advert shows no number at all

1. Use the right where it exists, in writing.

An advert without a number asks you to die Katze im Sack kaufen (buy the cat in the sack: buy blind). Where the law lets you open the sack, open it. In Italy, the pay belongs in the advert. In Poland you are entitled to it before the interview at the latest. Ireland's draft would put it in the advert, and the Dutch bill before salary negotiations. Across the EU the Directive gives you the number in time to negotiate once your country has actually transposed it. In Germany, as I set out in August⁵⁷, public employers owe you the starting pay before the interview since 8th June 2026, while private employers can keep their Obstkorb mystique until the national law arrives. In thirteen US states, DC and several cities, a missing range in a covered posting is itself a breach. Where a right exists, ask by email before the first interview, name the rule, and keep the reply. UK readers can still shape their own version: the consultation is open until 27th October 2026, and unlike a first-round interview, somebody is obliged to read your answer.²

2. Use the international mirror.

Multinationals hiring in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, California, Colorado or Washington now have to publish ranges for US postings, and since June 2026 so do their Italian subsidiaries. Search the same employer's careers page for the same job title in those locations. The dollar figure will not translate into euros, złoty or francs, because pay levels, tax and social security differ too much. What does translate is structure: how far the manager level sits above the senior level, and whether "Associate Director" at that company is a real step or a new business card with a longer title and the same parking space. In my experience candidates rarely try it, and it costs twenty minutes.

3. Decode the collective agreement.

If a German pharma employer is bound by the IGBCE chemical agreement, the tables are public and the pay group is often guessable from the job's requirements.⁴⁹ The March 2026 settlement adds 2.1% from 1st January 2027 and 2.4% from 1st January 2028.⁵⁸ If an employer promises "tarifliche Vergütung" (pay under the collective agreement) and you only understand Bahnhof (I only understand train station: it's all Greek to me), print the table and read it twice. You can calculate most of the offer before the first interview.

4. Put the money question into the first call.

In Stepstone's survey, every second job seeker in Germany has already decided against applying because the salary was missing.²² In the UK, 80% say they avoid applying to such adverts.⁵⁹ Most people solve the problem by walking away. You can solve it with one sentence, delivered with a warm voice and no apology: "Before we both invest more time, can you share the budgeted range for this role?" If the recruiter starts um den heißen Brei herumzureden (to talk around the hot porridge: to beat about the bush), smile and wait. Recruiters who refuse at stage one rarely turn into philanthropists at stage five.

5. If you must name a figure first, name a researched range.

Give a range whose bottom is your genuine minimum and whose top is the best-supported market number from part one. Link it to the scope of the role and leave your current salary out of it. In the EU, asking about your pay history is on its way out of the law.⁵ If the reply is "that's our budget, take it or leave it", you have received a Friss oder stirb (eat or die: take it or leave it) offer, and at least now you know the menu.

Where the range bites differently

Juniors and career starters, including anyone needing a visa. Check the bottom of every range against the salary threshold for your residence permit before the interview, because an offer that fails the threshold fails your visa, however lovely the team lunch was. The German Federal Ministry of the Interior publishes the EU Blue Card thresholds every year. And please do not expect the top of an entry-level range in year one. It usually describes the person who has survived three reorganisations in that job.

Professionals with two years' experience up to senior managers. Use the mirror tactic, because a "Manager" at a large pharma company and a "Manager" at a 40-person biotech can sit a full level apart. Check before you celebrate a title change as a promotion and discover it was a costume.

Candidates aged 50 and over. A published range cuts both ways. The top can be used, silently, to screen out experienced candidates as "too expensive" before anyone has spoken to you. The same range also shows you early whether the employer has room for your experience, which spares you three interview rounds ending in "we had a different budget in mind". Apply where the upper third fits you, and say early that the role's range is what you're working to. That sentence takes the fear of "expensive" off the table without selling you short.

Executives. The laws were written for the rest of the organisation. Ontario exempts roles above $200,000.²⁹ In Germany, better-paid occupations disclose pay less often.¹⁸ US research on older postings found that high-wage firms are more opaque, with more and wider ranges.⁶⁰ At your level the number arrives through the search firm or the board, if at all. Ask for the full package structure in writing before the final round: base, target bonus with its real payout history, long-term incentives, pension and severance terms. At board level, somebody has to die Hosen runterlassen (drop their trousers: put all the cards on the table). Better them than you after signing.

Four lines for my fellow recruiters

• Publish ranges narrow enough to mean something. Ontario's $50,000 cap is a sensible house rule even where no law demands it.²⁹
• Add the typical starting salary and what moves an offer upwards. One sentence, and it narrows the gender gap in how people apply and negotiate.⁵⁶
• Check internal pay equity before you post, or your advert becomes a recruitment campaign for your competitors. One employer in five in Payscale's survey already lost staff that way.⁴³
• Your US and Italian postings are already public. Candidates in Frankfurt, Basel, Warsaw, Amsterdam and Dublin can read them, and some of them own a calculator.

Where that leaves us

The places that forced salaries into job adverts did not collapse. Wages rose a few percent, adverts kept coming, applicants drifted towards employers who paid well, and a small legal industry in Seattle discovered a very profitable hobby. The places that did not act kept their adverts beautifully written, full of passion and fruit, and entirely silent about the one thing that makes 86% of German job seekers more likely to apply.

Geld stinkt nicht (money does not smell), as the Roman emperor Vespasian is said to have argued about his toilet tax. Apparently it does smell once it is printed in a job advert.

Until the law catches up with your market, do its job yourself: measure the range, decode it, mirror it, and ask for the number in writing before you spend another Sunday rehearsing a presentation. The advert that offers "attraktive Vergütung" is telling you something after all. It is telling you it would rather not say.

Over to you

• Have you ever reached the final round and discovered the salary was 20% below your expectations? What did you say, and what did you want to say?
• Recruiters and hiring managers: when you started publishing ranges, did applications rise, fall or simply get more realistic?
• What is the most useless salary range you have ever seen in an advert? Bonus points for anything beating $0 to $2 million.
• Should the law cap the width of a range, and if so, at what?

Answer in the comments, because your story helps other readers far more than a like does. Repost this for the colleague who is about to spend four interview rounds on a job paying in fruit. Save it for your next negotiation. And subscribe to the newsletter so the next issue reaches you before the next recruiter call does.

If you would like the extra layer: my email Inner Circle at morethancareer.de/#newsletter gives subscribers 5% off my coaching and Reverse Recruitment programmes and 15% off my upcoming book, "Surviving the Pharma Bloodbath - The Ultimate Job Search Guide for Pharma entry level and professionals". In future, I will also share career tips there that will not appear in the LinkedIn newsletter.

If you want help turning a salary range into an actual offer: career coaching with job search strategy, interview preparation and salary negotiation training with tailored scripts, Reverse Recruitment, and CV and LinkedIn rewrites and rebranding for pharma professionals in Europe and the US. Seventeen years in recruitment, nine of them at Bayer and five before that at ICON and Syneos. All at www.morethancareer.de.

Prost. Und fragt nach der Zahl, bevor ihr den Anzug bügelt. (Cheers. And ask for the number before you iron the suit.)

Sources and references

[1] Preisangabenverordnung (German Price Indication Ordinance), section 4, obligation to state the unit price: gesetze-im-internet.de

[2] UK Office for Equality and Opportunity, "Equal pay and pay discrimination", consultation document, 14th July 2026: gov.uk

[3] Personnel Today, "UK going backwards on job ad pay transparency" (Adzuna data), 19th May 2026: personneltoday.com

[4] Euronews Business, article on salary information in European job ads (Indeed data), 8th September 2026: euronews.com

[5] Directive (EU) 2023/970 of 10th May 2023, Articles 5 and 34, EUR-Lex: eur-lex.europa.eu

[6] Legal500, Legislative Decree No. 96/2026 implementing Directive (EU) 2023/970 in Italy: legal500.com

[7] TPE Actu on the French pay transparency bill, 10th September 2026: tpeactu.fr

[8] Lewis Silkin, "Poland moves ahead with Pay Transparency", 19th December 2025: lewissilkin.com

[9] Infor.pl, justjoin.it and rocketjobs.pl data on salary ranges in Polish job ads, 27th April 2026: kadry.infor.pl

[10] PwC Netherlands, "EU Pay Transparency: European Commission Rejects postponement", 19th December 2025: pwc.nl

[11] L&E Global, Netherlands update on the bill implementing the Directive, 24th March 2026: leglobal.law

[12] Mason Hayes & Curran on Ireland's transposition of the Pay Transparency Directive: mhc.ie

[13] Lisa Feist, Indeed Hiring Lab, "Full Salary Transparency in Europe is Still a Distant Prospect", 7th May 2026: hiringlab.indeed.com

[14] Greenhouse, 2025 Workforce & Hiring Report (UK and Ireland): greenhouse.com

[15] Austrian Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (Equal Treatment Act), sections 9 and 10, RIS: ris.bka.gv.at and WKO on stating minimum pay in job adverts: wko.at

[16] karriere.at press release, "Mehr Gehaltstransparenz am Stellenmarkt", 20th April 2026: ots.at

[17] Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 21/7916, motion of the Die Linke parliamentary group, 8th September 2026: dserver.bundestag.de

[18] Indeed Hiring Lab Germany, "Gehaltsangaben bleiben in Deutschland die Ausnahme", 5th March 2025: hiringlab.org

[19] Homburger on the EU Pay Transparency Directive from a Swiss perspective: homburger.ch

[20] Swiss Parliament, Motion 22.4443 "Lohntransparenz bei Stelleninseraten. Vorbildfunktion des Bundes und der öffentlichen Betriebe", Federal Council response and National Council vote of 19th September 2023: parlament.ch

[21] JobCloud, "Der Lohn in Stelleninseraten", July 2024: jobcloud.ch

[22] Stepstone, "Gehaltsprognosen in Stellenanzeigen" (Job & Gehalt survey 2024/2025): stepstone.de

[23] National Law Review on the FAR Council's withdrawal of the federal contractor pay transparency rule, 9th January 2025: natlawreview.com

[24] Virginia Mercury on Virginia's new pay transparency law, 27th July 2026: virginiamercury.com

[25] Colorado Department of Labor and Employment: cdle.colorado.gov ; California Employment Law Report on SB 1162: californiaemploymentlawreport.com ; Washington L&I factsheet: lni.wa.gov ; New York State Department of Labor: dol.ny.gov ; Hawaii Civil Rights Commission FAQ: labor.hawaii.gov ; Cooley on DC, 26th March 2024: cooley.com ; Maryland Department of Labor FAQ: labor.maryland.gov ; Illinois Department of Labor FAQ: labor.illinois.gov ; National Law Review (Epstein Becker Green), 25th July 2025: natlawreview.com ; Duane Morris on New Jersey, 16th December 2024: duanemorris.com ; Mintz on Massachusetts, 30th September 2025: mintz.com ; Morgan Lewis on Maine, 7th May 2026: morganlewis.com

[26] National Law Review (Foley) on Connecticut, 14th September 2026: natlawreview.com ; Ogletree on Delaware, 30th September 2025: ogletree.com ; NYC Commission on Human Rights, salary transparency factsheet: nyc.gov

[27] Axios Denver, 22nd June 2021: axios.com

[28] BCLP on Colorado's pay transparency laws, 9th March 2023: bclplaw.com

[29] Government of Ontario, guide to the Employment Standards Act, requirements for publicly advertised job postings: ontario.ca

[30] Indeed Hiring Lab Canada, "Growth in Canadian Salary Transparency Driven by Two Provinces", 23rd July 2026: hiringlab.org

[31] Arnold, Quach and Taska, "The Impact of Pay Transparency in Job Postings on the Labor Market", NBER Working Paper 34480, November 2025: nber.org

[32] Amen Jalal, "The Price of Flexibility: Revealing Salaries in Job Postings", World Bank Development Impact blog, 7th November 2025: blogs.worldbank.org

[33] Balgova, Tekleselassie, Hensel and Witte, "Wage Information and Applicant Selection", IZA Discussion Paper 18220, October 2025: docs.iza.org

[34] Frimmel, Schmidpeter, Wiesinger and Winter-Ebmer, "External Pay Transparency and the Gender Wage Gap", IZA Discussion Paper 16233, June 2023: docs.iza.org

[35] Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics, "Do Employers Comply with Pay Transparency Requirements in Job Postings?", 2nd October 2025: libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

[36] Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Equal Pay for Equal Work Act claim summary data, updated 4th September 2026: cdle.colorado.gov

[37] Association of Washington Business on Washington's pay transparency law, 26th November 2025: awb.org

[38] Fisher Phillips on the Washington Supreme Court ruling, 5th September 2025: fisherphillips.com

[39] Seyfarth on Washington's amendment to the Equal Pay and Opportunities Act, 22nd May 2025: seyfarth.com

[40] Vice on wide salary ranges after New York City's law, 1st November 2022: vice.com

[41] New York City Council press release on its salary transparency investigation: council.nyc.gov

[42] Glassdoor, "Navigating pay transparency: a closer look at employer pay ranges", 30th September 2024: glassdoor.com

[43] Payscale, 2025 Compensation Best Practices Report: payscale.com

[44] Mercer press release on its Global Pay Transparency Survey, 16th February 2026: mercer.com

[45] JobCloud, "Vom Ungewissen in die Klarheit: Wie JobCloud Lohntransparenz erreicht hat": jobcloud.ch

[46] Zoë Cullen, "Is Pay Transparency Good?", Harvard Business School Working Paper 23-039: hbs.edu

[47] Morgan Lewis on California's SB 642, 5th November 2025: morganlewis.com

[48] Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Swiss Earnings Structure Survey 2024, 25th November 2025: bfs.admin.ch

[49] IGBCE, "Verdienst in der Chemieindustrie": igbce.de

[50] Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Entgeltatlas: web.arbeitsagentur.de (help page: arbeitsagentur.de)

[51] Statistisches Bundesamt, interactive pay comparison: service.destatis.de

[52] Stepstone Gehaltsreport (page updated January 2026): stepstone.de

[53] Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Salarium salary calculator: bfs.admin.ch

[54] Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025: ons.gov.uk

[55] US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2025: bls.gov

[56] Lee, Park and Chang, "The implications of pay range transparency on job application preferences and negotiations", Journal of Applied Psychology, 2026: doi.org

[57] MoreThanCareer.de, newsletter issue on Germany's missed transposition deadline, 18th August 2026: morethancareer.de

[58] IGBCE, summary of the Chemie 2026 settlement, 25th March 2026: igbce.de

[59] People Management, "Majority of jobseekers avoid roles without salary details, survey finds" (Totaljobs Salary Trends Report 2026), 16th March 2026: peoplemanagement.co.uk

[60] Batra, Michaud and Mongey, "Online Job Posts Contain Very Little Wage Information", NBER Working Paper 31984, December 2023: nber.org

© 15th September 2026 Andreas Schulz. All rights reserved.