Salary Transparency: Impact on Hiring in 2026

Most tech companies treat salary transparency as a compliance issue: what number to put to meet legal requirements. The reality is that the job posting is the least of it. The day you publish a salary range, it’s not just the candidate who reads it; it’s also the person who’s been doing the same job in your team for three years.

Is it mandatory to publish salary ranges in 2026? In the European Union, yes. The EU Directive 2023/970 on salary transparency requires that salary ranges be disclosed in job postings or before the first interview, with a compliance deadline of June 7, 2026. In the United States, there’s no federal law, but as of July 2026, 50.4% of job postings on Indeed included salary information—the highest since records began (Indeed Hiring Lab, 2026).

What does the European salary transparency directive require from June 2026?

The salary transparency directive is an EU regulation that mandates employers to disclose what they pay and why. For the hiring process, it has three specific rules, according to EURES (October 2026):

1. Candidates must know the salary range before the first interview, either in the job posting or through prior contact.
2. Employers cannot ask candidates about their current or past salaries.
3. Companies with 100 or more employees must report their gender pay gap.

The issue is that each country implements it at its own pace. Here’s what the transposition trackers show as of September 2026:

Country	Status of salary transparency law (2026)
Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, Malta	National law fully in effect by June 7, 2026
Poland	Recruitment rules in effect since December 2025
Netherlands	Deadline missed, target January 1, 2027
Germany	Draft still not approved by the cabinet
Spain	No draft; public consultation closed in May 2026

The delay in local laws doesn’t change much for employers. The market moved ahead of the parliaments: by June 2026, 58% of job postings in the UK and 57% in Canada already included salary information (Indeed Hiring Lab, 2026).

Does publishing salary ranges attract more candidates?

Yes, and the evidence is quite consistent. A field experiment involving 20,088 job postings from 8,906 companies found that publishing salary information increased applications by 49% (Jalal, World Bank, 2024).

From the candidate’s perspective, 44% of job seekers in the past year said they were unlikely to apply for a job without a salary range (Patriot Software, January 2026). In senior tech roles, where candidates receive multiple offers weekly, this filter is even stronger.

And the classic fear that publishing salaries “inflates the market” and hinders hiring doesn’t hold up in the data. A study by the NBER on U.S. state laws found salary increases between 1.3% and 3.6%, with no effect on the number of job postings, employment, or job requirements (Arnold, Quach, and Taska, 2025).

Why does a too-wide salary range work worse than not publishing anything?

Many companies opt to comply without commitment: posting something like USD 90,000 to 180,000. Technically, it’s a range. Practically, it says nothing.

The data shows this approach backfires. A Cornell study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2026 found that wide ranges discourage applications, especially from women, due to uncertainty about the actual offer. Another study from Washington State University found that a very wide range makes the employer seem less trustworthy, worsening when the phrase “depending on experience” is added.

The same Cornell study found something useful: when a job posting explains the typical entry salary and how the final offer is determined, the application gap disappears. The issue isn’t providing a range; it’s providing one without context.

What happens to your current team when you publish the range?

This is the part almost no compliance guide mentions. A job posting with a range is, in practice, a public salary audit. If you hire someone new at the top of the band, the person who joined two years ago at the middle of that band finds out the same day.

This phenomenon is known as salary compression. It occurs when new hires earn the same or more than longer-tenured employees in the same role. According to Payscale, 14% of employers have already lost talent because their employees saw higher ranges in job postings, and 11% say their staff discovered through a posting that they were underpaid. WTW reports that 40% of companies are already measuring the impact of transparency on retention.

In the processes we manage in LATAM, we see the same pattern, even without a legal requirement. Senior candidates ask for the number in the first conversation. And when a company adds someone to a team with bands they’ve never reviewed, the tension doesn’t appear in the interview. It appears months later, within the existing team.

How should a tech company prepare before publishing its first range?

It’s not as complicated as it seems, but the order matters:

• First, look internally. Compare current salaries for each role against the range you plan to publish. If anyone is below the band, address it before the posting, not after.
• Define bands based on objective criteria. Level, role scope, and skills. The directive requires this, and it helps your team understand why they earn what they do.
• Publish a range that means something. A narrow range with context (typical entry salary and how the offer is decided) is more effective than a wide one for cover.
• Stop anchoring offers on previous salaries. In Europe, it’s already illegal to ask. In any market, offers based on the role’s value age better than those based on the candidate’s history.

What really changes

Salary transparency is often discussed as a rule for job postings. But the posting is what the candidate sees. What it reveals is how you pay your team.

The companies that will hire better in 2027 aren’t those that find the neatest way to comply. They’re the ones that have already reviewed their bands and can publish a number without fear of their own people seeing it.