Do job ads show the pay? A pay transparency report

The EU's Pay Transparency Directive gives everyone applying for a job the right to know the starting pay or its range, and EU countries had until 7 June 2026 to write it into national law. Four months later, we checked how often job ads actually show a figure. On 3 October 2026 we read 15,322ads from three places: the newest vacancies on EURES, the EU's own job portal, in 22 countries; every posting on the career boards of 57 tech companies, in the US, Europe and elsewhere; and 395 listings from seven job boards. The method and its limits are at the end.

Europe, country by country

The spread is not a gentle slope. In 8 countries nine in ten ads or more showed pay; in 5, fewer than one in ten did, and Germany sat in the middle at 50%. Where the figure appears so reliably, it mostly sits in the pay field of the national employment service's vacancy form: in Cyprus, Czechia, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Poland and Slovakia that field was filled for at least nine in ten vacancies.

Austria is the clearest case of the law at work. Its Equal Treatment Act requires a job ad to state the minimum pay set by the collective agreement or by law, and whether the employer is willing to pay more. 99% of Austrian ads showed a figure, 70%of them only as a sentence in the text, such as (translated from German) “the minimum pay for this position is 2,000.00 EUR gross a month on a full-time basis. Willingness to pay more.”

In Ireland, Finland, Belgium and Spain, the pay that did appear was mostly written into the ad itself, not a form field.

In Germany, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, at least one ad in ten named a collective agreement or a pay grade without giving an amount (“salary according to the collective agreement”). The agreement does fix the pay, so the information exists, but you have to look the table up yourself. We did not count those ads as showing pay.

The same companies, two continents

The cleanest comparison holds the employer constant. 22 tech companies posted at least five jobs in the US and five in Europe on the job pages of their applicant tracking system, the same software on both sides. They showed pay on 84% of their US ads (1,841 of 2,203) and 20% of their European ones (157 of 770). 16 of the 22 showed pay more often in the US, and 8 showed it on at least nine in ten US ads and fewer than one in ten European ones.

The US side sits next to laws that ask for exactly this. California requires employers with 15 or more employees to put the pay scale in any job posting. Illinois has required pay scale and benefits in job postings since 1 January 2025, and New York City a good faith pay range in every job ad since 1 November 2022. Across all 57 career boards, 91% of postings in California, 80% in New York state and 72% in Illinois showed pay. In Europe, Spain, Portugal and Poland come out higher than their neighbours because a few of these companies state pay in every country they hire in.

Job boards that show the pay

Where a board makes pay part of the listing, nearly every listing has it: government boards in particular. Two other boards Job Badger searches, Working Nomads and Arbeitnow, send no pay field at all, so a listing there can only state pay in its text.

What the EU directive does and does not require

Article 5 gives applicants the right to receive “the initial pay or its range” from the prospective employer, and says how: “in a manner such as to ensure an informed and transparent negotiation on pay, such as in a published job vacancy notice, prior to the job interview or otherwise”. So an ad without a figure does not by itself break the rule: the employer can give it before the interview instead. What the directive does rule out is the opposite question. Under Article 5(2), an employer shall not ask applicants about their pay history.

The directive works through national law, which each EU country had to adopt by 7 June 2026 and which can go further, as Austria's already does. The share of ads that show pay is the visible part: it is what you know before you spend an evening on an application.

What to do with this

If the ad shows no figure, ask before the interview. In the EU the directive backs you once your country has adopted it, and anywhere, asking early saves an interview for a job you would not take.

If the ad names a collective agreement or a pay grade (TVöD E9, a kollektivavtal, a CCNL level), the pay is set: search for that agreement's pay table. In Austria, read the minimum pay sentence and look for the willingness to pay more.

Job Badger's search shows the pay on a listing whenever the board sends it, and sorts by newest first if you ask. Free, without an account.

How we did it

EURES. On 3 October 2026we asked the EURES portal's public search for the newest vacancies in each of its 31 countries, kept at most three per named employer so one large recruiter could not fill a country, and read each vacancy's full record, which holds a structured pay field that the search results leave out. EURES shows that field on the vacancy page as “Remuneration”. We report 22 countries. Not shown: Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Lithuania, Norway and Romania, where more than 25% of the vacancies EURES received were stubs of a line or two with no pay field, which says nothing about the employers' own ads. Also not shown: Iceland, Italy and Liechtenstein, with fewer than 100 vacancies from distinct employers. EURES carries what employers register with the national employment services, not every job in a country.

Career boards. We read every listed posting on the public job boards of 57 tech companies that use Greenhouse, Ashby or Lever (9,280 postings), and placed each by its first location. A posting counts as showing pay when the board's pay field is filled or the description states an amount. The same-company comparison uses only postings on the tracking system's own job pages: some companies publish their jobs on their own website and add the pay there without it reaching the feed (Stripe does, for its US, Dublin and London jobs), so for those the feed is not the ad.

Job boards. We ran a few searches on Job Badger for each board (London for Reed; Washington, New York and Chicago for USAJOBS, NYC Jobs and jooble; Singapore for MyCareersFuture; remote jobs for Jobicy and Remote OK) and counted the listings that arrived with a pay figure from the board itself.

Reading the text.“Shows pay” means an amount of money in a pay context: a currency next to a number, with a pay word (“salary”, “Gehalt”, “wynagrodzenie”, “palkka”) or a period (“per month”, “/h”) close by, in any of the languages EURES carries, and no closer word that makes it a different sum: a revenue figure, a budget, a meal or travel allowance, a bonus. We read the matches and the misses by hand and corrected the rules before counting; an Irish recruiter's salary line, Finnish “euroa” and a Latvian “mēnešalga” were all missed at first, and a learning and development stipend, a Swedish wellness allowance and a Norwegian student loan write-off were once taken for pay.

The limits, plainly. This is one day's snapshot. EURES is the public employment services' share of the market, not private job sites; the career boards are mostly US tech companies; the job board samples are a few dozen listings each. Counting only stated amounts makes every figure here a floor: an ad that promises pay “per the collective agreement” or gives it on request is not counted.

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