82% of Irish respondents say they would be more likely to apply for a job if a salary range is included, according to new data from Indeed.
It found that 39% of Irish job postings include salary information, up just 3% from March last year.
The 7 June deadline for implementing the EU’s pay transparency directive is only weeks away but most large member states, including Ireland, are likely to miss it.
The directive is to mandate salary transparency, however the research shows that the share of job postings on Indeed that include salary information has stalled over the past year in advance of that legislation coming down the track.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland Jack Kennedy, Senior Economist at Indeed, said: “Ireland is actually going down the road of a slightly stronger version than actually is required by the directive, whereby posting the salary and the job posting itself would be mandated rather than just providing it prior to a first interview.”
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A spokesperson from the Department of Children, Disability and Equality said in relation to parts of the bill regarding salaries on job postings, officials are still considering recommendations from last October’s Pre-Legislative Scrutiny report and that other factors that have also impacted its work.
It also said that employers will not be penalised for not having all elements of the directive completed in June and the Department has been working with stakeholders to communicate this message.
Mr Kennedy said Indeed’s research is “pretty clear”.
“Where the salary is included in the job posting, we find pretty strong evidence that that raises the likelihood of people applying to a job,” said Mr Kennedy.
He added that from an efficiency standpoint this is important because it saves people investing a lot of time before they apply.
“From a macroeconomic perspective, it can raise the efficiency of job matches, reduce negotiating frictions, and also help close pay gaps that persist because of a lack of transparency, and particularly areas like the gender pay gap, where a lack of transparency, all the research shows, is strongly associated with the persistence of that gap,” he added.
One of the key findings of the research was that across Europe, around three in four women said they should be more likely to apply to a job if the salary was stated and believe job postings should include salary ranges as standard.
It found that this compared to roughly two in three men, which it said underpinned the argument that transparency could help reduce gender disparities in application behaviour.
Compared to other countries, the data shows that Ireland sits in the middle of the pack: ranges are tighter than in high-variance markets like Italy (50%) and the Netherlands (35%), but broadly similar to France (18%) and slightly below Germany (23%).
Mr Kennedy said the highest transparency is in the UK with around 56% of job postings including some salary information.
“We’ve seen across most countries a levelling off or a slight decline in some cases, perhaps linked to the softening of labour market conditions with employers having seen kind of more bargaining power swinging back in their favour as job postings have declined and candidates have fewer options,” he said.
In advance of companies being compelled by legislation to be more transparent in job postings, employers are in “a bit of a wait and see mode” at the time being, according to Mr Kennedy.
