According to TalentUp's analysis of 1,194,497 job ads published across the 27 EU countries between May and August 2026, the share of ads that include salary rose from 10.5% to 22.8%. The jump comes right after 7 June, the deadline for transposing the EU Pay Transparency Directive, not before.
Publishing salaries is the easy part. What happens when everyone knows how much you're willing to pay?
A multi-speed Europe
The Directive requires employers to tell candidates the starting salary or its range before negotiating, and bans asking about previous pay. Each member state decides how to apply it. Italy has chosen the most visible approach: including pay in the job ad itself. Spain has not yet specified how it will do so.
The monthly trend across the EU is steady: 10.5% in May, 15.0% in June, 20.7% in July and 22.8% in August. Italy, one of the few countries that transposed on time, more than triples its share and doubles the EU average.
Differences between countries are wide. Lithuania rises 69.4 points and Sweden 45.7. France falls 5.6 points and Romania 16.6. Spain and Italy have already overtaken France, while Germany, the EU's largest market, remains among the least transparent.
Change in salary-disclosure share · May–Aug 2026
- Lithuania +69.4 pts
- Sweden +45.7 pts
- France -5.6 pts
- Romania -16.6 pts
Esperta Pay analysis
“Publishing the number will be relatively easy,” says Esperta Pay. “The hard part will be proving there is a logic behind it that can be explained. Pay transparency doesn't start with payroll: it starts with organisational design, how we define roles, the value we assign to them, and how we recognise people's contribution.”
“If several companies compete for the same scarce talent and all make their pay bands visible, transparency can fuel a salary auction, and not every company will be able to compete by paying more,” it adds. “The more visible the salary, the more important it becomes to back the rest of the value proposition with facts.”
On negotiation, it explains: “A pay band doesn't eliminate negotiation; it changes its starting point. The real progress won't be knowing the number, but understanding which rules determine why one person enters at one point in the band and another at a different one.”
“External transparency can expose problems that already existed: pay compression, gaps between new hires and current staff, or inconsistencies between seemingly equivalent roles. The problem won't be that the band is known, but that the company can't explain the difference,” it concludes. “And pay bands start to reveal why a company is willing to pay above or below the market for certain roles, which already says something about its strategy: where it's placing its bets, and what talent it wants to attract.”
One number, four conversations
A published pay range is no longer seen only by the candidate. Esperta Pay identifies four effects:
Employers
Must decide upfront which role they are hiring for, its level and how much to pay. Those who cannot compete on pay will have to prove the rest of their value proposition.
Candidates
Negotiation starts from a different place. The question becomes why they land at one point in the range and not another.
Current employees
A better paid vacancy for an equivalent role exposes pay compression and internal inconsistencies.
Competitors
Thousands of ads with salary form a near real time source of pay intelligence, revealing which profiles each company considers critical.
Methodology
Data on job ads published in the 27 EU member states between May and August 2026, collected by TalentUp. An ad is counted as showing salary when it includes a figure or a pay range.