Pay transparency in job postings is on the rise, with 57.8% of all U.S. job listings on Indeed last month featuring salary information, up from 52.2% in September 2023, according to data from Indeed’s Hiring Lab.
Childcare jobs lead in transparency, with 81.7% of postings including salary details. They are followed by personal care/home health (74.5%), security/public safety (74.1%), dental (73.2%), and driving positions (72.7%), as noted by Indeed Outreach Economist Daniel Culbertson.
“Salary transparency is increasingly becoming a common feature in job postings, especially as more states pass legislation requiring it,” Culbertson stated. “But despite continued growth in salary transparency overall, some sectors and states remain more opaque than others when it comes to disclosing pay information.”
In contrast, the least transparent fields include physicians and surgeons (39.1%), medical technicians (44.6%), medical information roles (45%), civil engineering (45.3%), and industrial engineering (46.9%).
Compared to a year ago, salary-transparent listings have increased in 43 out of 46 sectors analyzed by Indeed — often significantly so. Pharmacy jobs experienced the largest change, with an increase of 24 percentage points; last month, 70.4% of pharmacy job postings included salary info compared to just 46.5% in September 2023.
Culbertson mentioned that state and municipal laws are influencing this trend toward greater transparency on Indeed's platform. Notably, Hawaii, Washington D.C., and New York saw the largest gains due to recent pay transparency laws.
In New Jersey, a salary transparency bill passed by the Legislature on September 26 awaits the Governor's decision by November 10 for enactment seven months after signing into law.
The proposed legislation targets employers operating in New Jersey with at least ten employees over twenty calendar weeks, mandating them to disclose wage or salary ranges along with benefits descriptions for new jobs and transfer opportunities in each posting.
NJBIA successfully advocated for amendments to make the bill more feasible for employers, including provisions allowing promotions based on tenure or performance without notification requirements and raising the employee threshold to ten for businesses covered under the bill’s provisions while removing potential civil court actions against alleged violations.
