How many job adverts actually tell you the salary?

We looked at 74,395 job adverts we could see, and 29,304 of them state a salary. That means salary is present in 39.4% of the adverts in this set, while 45,091 adverts, or 60.6%, do not state pay at all.

The headline answer

Most job adverts still do not tell you the salary. In this collection, the share that withholds pay is larger than the share that includes it by a wide margin.

That gap matters because salary is one of the fastest ways for a candidate to decide whether a role is worth time and effort. When more than half of adverts leave it out, job seekers have to do more guessing than they should.

Salary by seniority

Salary visibility changes a lot by level. Some seniority groups are much more open about pay than others, and the differences are large enough to affect how useful an advert is before a candidate even applies.

Staff roles are the most likely in this data to show pay, with salaries in 68.9% of postings. VP roles also do better than average at 59.6%, and Director roles are above the overall rate too.

At the other end, C-level roles and postings with no seniority stated are both low on salary visibility. Intern roles are also low, which is a reminder that early-career candidates cannot assume pay is more transparent just because the role is entry level.

The pattern is that salary disclosure is not simply a matter of seniority rising or falling. Senior roles are not the most transparent, and some lower-volume categories are far more open than larger ones. That suggests disclosure is shaped by employer habits as much as by level.

Salary by country

Country also makes a big difference. In some places, more than half of postings state salary; in others, pay is almost always omitted.

Canada has the highest salary share in this group at 59.1%, with the US close behind at 53.9%. Those are the countries where a job seeker is most likely to learn pay directly from the advert.

India and Japan sit at the opposite end of the table, with salary shown in only 5.3% and 4.5% of postings respectively. That means almost every advert in those markets leaves the candidate to infer pay from context, not from the listing itself.

The UK is below the overall average at 33.9%. Germany, Spain and Australia are also well below the stronger North American figures. For anyone comparing markets, the practical lesson is that salary transparency is uneven enough that location alone changes how much information you can expect before you apply.

Which employers are most open about pay

Employer behaviour is just as uneven. Some large names almost never show salary, while others include it in most or all of their adverts.

The spread here is striking. At one end, several employers show salary in almost none of their adverts. At the other, several include it in most of theirs, and one is effectively always open about pay in this dataset.

That tells us salary transparency is not just a market-level habit. It can also be an employer-level policy. If you are searching efficiently, the employer name matters as much as the role title.

It also shows why a single national average can hide a lot. Two companies in the same broad sector can behave completely differently. One may publish pay almost every time; another may leave candidates guessing almost every time.

What the adverts say about other basics

Salary is not the only thing many adverts leave out. The same pattern appears in several other fields that help a candidate decide whether to apply.

Remote work is much more visible than sponsorship or work authorisation. More than half of the adverts are remote, but the employment-rights details are mostly silent.

That silence is useful in itself. If 95.6% of adverts say nothing about work authorisation and 96.2% say nothing about sponsorship, candidates cannot assume those questions will be answered up front. They may need to screen for them separately.

The same applies to hybrid and on-site roles. In this set, those labels are uncommon compared with remote. A candidate who wants a specific working arrangement should not rely on the advert spelling it out.

Skills and what they tell us

The most common skills help show what kind of market this is, even though they do not directly explain salary disclosure.

The list is dominated by technical roles, cloud tools and software skills. That helps explain why salary visibility varies so much by employer and region. Technical hiring is broad, but it is not uniform.

It also suggests that candidates should look at salary together with the skill profile of the role. A posting that asks for high-demand technical skills but omits pay may still be worth reviewing, but it deserves a closer look before anyone commits time.

Employment type

Most of the adverts are full-time.

That distribution matters because salary disclosure often tracks with how formalised the role is. Full-time roles dominate the set, so the overall salary figure is driven mostly by that group.

The large UNKNOWN category is another sign that many postings do not fully describe themselves. When role type is unclear and salary is missing too, the advert is giving less decision-making information than candidates probably need.

What to do with this

If you are searching for a role, use salary as a filter first wherever you can. In this dataset, that would immediately reduce the pool from 74,395 adverts to the 29,304 that actually show pay.

If you are comparing markets, use country as a second filter. Canada and the US are much more transparent than India, Japan, Brazil or Mexico in this set, so the same search can feel very different depending on where you look.

If you are comparing employers, treat salary history as a signal. Some employers show pay consistently; others almost never do. That pattern is useful before you apply, not after.

And if an advert does not mention salary, do not assume the absence is random. In this data, omission is the norm rather than the exception. Knowing that saves time.

If you want to search postings with this kind of breakdown already counted for you, Jobee does that work on the adverts it has collected.