In the weeks since the EU Pay Transparency rules came into full force, how have organizations reacted to the change?
At the beginning of June, changes were made to the way companies in EU member states are required to share employee-related information. I EU Pay Transparency Directive a policy that aims to reduce the gender wage gap, ensure fair wage structures and create an environment where professionals and job seekers can have open discussions about wages and other topics.
Since it was first passed in 2023, countries are given three years to comply with the new rules and make any necessary changes. It’s been a month now since that last time, but what has changed?
Job search platform Mokaru analyzed 1,776,876 job listings worldwide posted between April and June, on the job sites of 48,758 employers, across more than 46 application tracking systems. It found that one month after the EU Pay Transparency Directive deadline, only 6.6pc of EU job adverts disclosed salary information. This compares to around 40pc in the US.
Mokaru’s experts said, “If you are job hunting in Europe, you already know the trend, read the list, check the salary, you don’t get anything, apply anyway and hope that the number at the end of four rounds of interviews will not waste everyone’s time. Our data shows exactly how bad it is and how it can vary.”
Since the US statistics are much higher than the available European data, Mokaru said, “Here is an uneasy time, the EU Pay Transparency Directive, a law, among other things, which gives applicants the right to receive salary information before the interview, had a deadline to come into force on June 7, 2026. One month later, the job advertisements of European employers are still surprisingly silent.”
Landscaping
Canada and the US are setting the pace as research finds that salaries are disclosed in more than a third of listings. In comparison, the UK followed behind at 21pc, the Netherlands at 12pc, Ireland at 10pc, France at 9pc and Austria again at 9pc.
Mokaru also found that the numbers varied widely, even in cases where employers from different regions were using the same job promotion platforms. Germany is one example as on Labor Day only 2.8pc of employers chose to disclose salary information, compared to over 40pc of US-based employers.
Sweden lies at the bottom of the list, with the least transparent job market, at 0.4pc, or less than one in 200 job listings. Despite the law coming into force and the European Commission sticking to the timeline, many countries have chosen to ‘delay’ implementation, Sweden has stopped it completely for now.
Mokaru said, “For us to deal with the law, it is early days. Four weeks is not enough time to rewrite employment and in many member states the national law binding employers is not yet in force, the bulk of the implementation will come between now and January 2027, with enforcement and subsequent penalties later.
“The honest conclusion from this data is not that the order has failed, that, one month, the behavior of the employer has not started to go.”
Growing trends
The study highlighted some striking patterns and trends, such as the impact that policy has had so far on long-term careers. What the data revealed is that remote job listings in the EU are almost twice as likely to disclose salary as on-site listings, at 11.5pc and 6.2pc respectively.
The report said, “Remote recruiters are competing for international talent, where US-style transparency is becoming the norm. Competition currently does more for European wage transparency than regulation. In the US, the remote/onsite gap is almost non-existent (39.5pc compared to 37.4pc), transparency rules where applicable.”
Looking at Ireland-specific data, Mokaru also found that as the level increases, transparency tends to decrease, with junior roles disclosing around 32pc, compared to 11pc for senior roles and 9pc for senior roles.
The report said, “more than four out of five Irish job adverts keep people guessing and the biggest role, when the ad is silent, junior positions reveal that they pay three times more than seniors.”
Finally, Mokaru’s experts are of the opinion that the burden of the European knowledge gap falls more on those with less bargaining power, especially invested people who cannot get out of several rounds of interviews when the offer finally arrives under their floor.
And “until the directive has teeth”, European candidates should know the characteristics that best indicate that the role they are applying for is in a company that is likely to accept change in policy.
So, until then be aware of your rights, look for friendly remote opportunities and research market rates because even if your employer plans to keep you in the dark, the information is probably available elsewhere.
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