“Say What You Pay”: Burnham To Make Salaries In Job Adverts A Legal Requirement

Employers will be legally required to publish salaries in job adverts, Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced on Thursday — and he urged firms to start doing it now rather than wait for the law.

"Whether you're a young person starting out or a parent trying to support your family, you should know what a job pays before spending your time and effort applying for it," Burnham said. "That's why we will make it a legal requirement for all employers to say what you pay." The government says it will bring forward legislation "as soon as possible."

The Gap The Law Aims At

Most job adverts still do not say. The CIPD's Pay, Performance and Transparency report, cited by the government, found only 41 percent of employers always publish salary ranges and 18 percent always publish a specific salary. Adzuna's data for September put salary information in 51 percent of adverts on its site — and the share has been falling.

The stated target is the youth-work crisis: nearly one million young people in Britain are not in education, employment or training. A Cabinet Office consultation found 94 percent of respondents backed the proposal — including 93 percent of businesses, a figure the government is using to argue the law pushes at an open door.

The announcement came with a linked programme: Siemens Mobility will offer work-experience placements to 10,000 young people over three years — more than 3,300 a year — in engineering and technology. The Milburn Review into youth inactivity reports in the coming weeks; the detail on the salary law's scope and enforcement is promised "in due course."

What is settled tonight is the principle and its slogan. A job's pay will stop being the last thing an applicant learns — by law, not by courtesy. The arguments to come are about the edges: ranges versus exact figures, small employers, enforcement. The consultation numbers suggest Downing Street expects to win them.

The youth-inactivity figure is the government's stated reason for moving now rather than in a later employment bill. Nearly one million young people out of education, employment and training is the statistic Downing Street returns to across its domestic programme, and the salary-transparency measure is pitched as the cheapest intervention in the set: it costs the Treasury nothing, and its burden falls on a job advert template. The Siemens Mobility placements — 10,000 over three years in engineering and technology — are the announcement's industrial half, giving the Prime Minister a named employer standing behind the policy on day one.

The consultation numbers will be quoted back at any employer body that resists: 94 percent of respondents in favour, 93 percent of businesses among them. Against that, the detail still to come — whether the law requires an exact salary or permits a range, how it treats commission and piece-rate work, what penalty attaches to a non-compliant advert — is where the lobbying will concentrate, and the government has left itself room by promising specifics "in due course" and the Milburn Review's findings first. A slogan has been announced; a statute has not. Both halves of that sentence were true of several policies this government has since delivered, which is why Thursday's announcement is being treated in the sector as a decision rather than a trial balloon.

Sources: GOV.UK (announcement, CIPD figures, Siemens programme); BBC (Adzuna data, consultation results, Milburn Review timing).