Fewer than four in 10 Irish job postings include salary information, highlighting a persistent gap between worker expectations and employer practice ahead of the EU’s June 2026 deadline.
Pay remains the single most influential factor shaping job search decisions across Europe. Yet new data from hiring platform Indeed shows that salary information is still missing from the majority of job advertisements, including in Ireland, even as the European Union moves closer to enforcing new pay transparency rules.
As of March 2026, just 39% of Irish job postings include any salary information, according to Indeed’s latest figures. This places Ireland behind the United Kingdom, where 56% of listings disclose pay, as well as the Netherlands at 48% and France at 43%. Ireland remains ahead of several large EU economies, including Germany at 12% and Spain at 17%.
“Until the introduction of a legal obligation, European employers will likely remain reluctant to adjust their job posting practices”
The data shows that Ireland has made progress over the past five years, with salary disclosure rising from 14.1% of postings in March 2020. Recent momentum has been limited. Over the past year, the share of Irish job ads that mention pay has increased by around 3 percentage points, rising from 36.1% in March 2025. That pace of change mirrors trends seen across many of Europe’s largest labour markets.
Strong demand for salary transparency
Italy stands out as an exception. Over the past 12 months, the share of Italian job postings that include salary information rose from 22% to 36%, marking the strongest sustained increase among large European economies. In the UK, which is not subject to the EU directive, salary transparency has moved in the opposite direction. Although the UK remains the most transparent large job market in Europe, the share of postings with pay details has fallen from almost two thirds to just over one half in recent months.
These trends are unfolding alongside a broader slowdown in job posting growth across major European economies. Ireland, France, the Netherlands and the UK have all seen job ad volumes level off, reducing the turnover of postings and slowing the diffusion of new hiring practices such as pay disclosure.
The slowdown contrasts with the views of jobseekers. An Indeed survey of 6,011 workers across six European countries shows strong support for salary transparency. Irish workers are the most supportive among those surveyed. 82% of respondents in Ireland said they would be more likely to apply for a job if a salary range was included in the advertisement. In Germany, the least supportive country in the survey, 61% expressed the same view.
Support for transparency is particularly strong among women. Across Europe, around three quarters of women surveyed said they would be more likely to apply for a role with a stated salary and believe pay ranges should be standard in job postings. Among men, support was closer to two thirds. The findings reinforce arguments that greater transparency could help narrow gender gaps in application behaviour and hiring outcomes.
Three years after the EU adopted its pay transparency directive in 2023, most large member states have yet to complete national legislation. Several are now expected to miss the June 2026 implementation deadline. France’s parliamentary timetable makes adoption before June unlikely. Germany has not yet introduced a bill, despite an expert commission publishing implementation recommendations in October 2025. The Netherlands has delayed implementation until 2027.
Ireland sits in a different position. Draft legislation has been prepared that goes beyond the minimum requirements of the EU directive. Under the directive, employers are required to share pay information with candidates before an interview. It does not obligate employers to publish pay details in the job advertisement itself. Ireland’s draft laws would mandate upfront disclosure in postings, setting a higher bar for transparency at the recruitment stage.
Patterns of transparency also vary sharply by occupation. Across Europe, jobs with lower pay levels and more standardised conditions are the most likely to include salary details. In Ireland, childcare roles show the highest transparency. In other countries, transparent postings are most common in sectors such as cleaning and sanitation in Germany, driving roles in Spain and Italy, food preparation and service in France, personal care and home health in the UK, and community and social services in the Netherlands. These roles tend to have higher turnover, fewer non-pay benefits and greater reliance on pay as the primary competitive lever.
When Irish employers do disclose pay, salary ranges are the dominant format. 57% of Irish job postings that include pay use ranges rather than precise figures. This places Ireland broadly in line with Spain and Germany. It trails markets such as the Netherlands, where range-based disclosure is more widely adopted.
Range widths in Ireland are relatively moderate. The median advertised range spans 19% across all roles. Hourly-paid jobs show tighter ranges, with a median of 15%, while annual salary roles widen slightly to 20%. Compared with other countries, Ireland sits near the middle. Ranges are far narrower than in Italy, where they average around 50%, and tighter than in the Netherlands at 35%. France records a similar average of 18%, and Germany sits slightly higher at 23%.
Lisa Feist, economist at Indeed, said prior experience from other jurisdictions suggests limited voluntary change from employers until legal requirements take effect.
“Our analyses of pay transparency laws in Canada and the United States found that employer behaviour changed primarily when specific disclosure laws took effect, not in anticipation of them. The pattern in Europe appears similar so far,” she said.
“With most large EU member states yet to pass national legislation, many employers do not appear willing to change their job posting practices. Against this backdrop, the June 2026 EU deadline is less a hard trigger than a starting point for legislative processes that will play out across most member states over the coming months. Individual countries may go further than the directive and mandate upfront disclosure, but until they do so, the directive allows postings to omit pay.”
Feist added that even once laws are in place, the quality of disclosure may vary.
“Until the introduction of a legal obligation, European employers will likely remain reluctant to adjust their job posting practices. Even then, the quality of disclosure is not guaranteed. Some employers may respond by posting ranges wide enough to satisfy the letter of the law while revealing little about actual pay. Either way, the current data shows how little European jobseekers know about pay in the jobs they apply to today.”
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