Pay transparency in job listings is less transparent than you might think

When Kate McKenzie was looking for a job in the spring of 2023, she found a mixed bag of approaches to pay transparency — the practice of being upfront about salaries, both internally and when hiring.

"Sometimes the pay would be listed on a job posting. Sometimes it would be a salary range. Sometimes it was not listed at all … and it was impossible to know if the job was well suited for me or not," said McKenzie, who lives in Calgary. 

When she would come across a job posting with an incredibly wide salary range, McKenzie told the Cost of Living it left her with the impression "they probably don't know what they actually want in that role."

"Because when it's that wide, it could be a more junior position, it could be a more senior position. It's like they haven't really taken the time to consider the specific level of experience that they're looking for."

With pay transparency legislation now in effect in British Columbia, passed in P.E.I., Newfoundland and Ontario, and proposed in Manitoba and Nova Scotia, companies are being called upon to include salary ranges with job postings, a move advocates say can help close the pay gap.

But while good progress is being made overall, they say, some organizations just aren't playing ball. They're posting such wide pay ranges it's impossible for candidates to assess whether the job is a fit.

"I've seen some crazy ones, like $50,000 to $200,000," said Darcy Clark, a compensation expert in Montreal with HR firm Normandin Beaudry. "That's far too wide. I mean, technically, by definition it is transparent, but it's misleading."

Allison Venditti, a Toronto-based human resources consultant and career coach, has been an outspoken advocate for pay transparency.

"Some companies hate that they're being made to do this. They're angry that they have to do it … it's like a petulant toddler who's just like, well, I'm going to put [a] 150,000 range then."

At their worst, these wide ranges can lead to candidates accepting salaries that don't meet their needs just to land the job.

"You go in there and you feel this expectation that you're supposed to somehow undersell yourself, that in order for you to get the job, you're going to have to be in the lower end of that range," said McKenzie.

"Basically it's a race to the bottom between you and other candidates rather than it being about where your skills are truly at and where your experience is truly at."

Overall, however, the legislative changes in various stages of implementation across the country do appear to have made it more common to include salary information in job postings.

A report based on data collected from postings on the job site Indeed found that 49 per cent of Canadian job listings in February 2024 included salary information, up from 22 per in early 2019.