Posting the Salary: The Honest Math

You’re writing your job posting. You reach the salary field. You type “based on experience,” and you move on.

It’s not ill will. You have three reasons not to post it, and they’re good ones. Let’s take them seriously before doing the math.

“My current employees will compare”

It’s the most legitimate of the three fears, and the only one that touches the inside. You post $52,000 for a role someone already holds at $48,000. The following Monday, you have a conversation.

Except that conversation already exists. It happens at lunch, in the parking lot, on a group chat. Your employees talk salary with each other, and they look at your competitors’ postings — which are, increasingly, posted. In Canada, nearly half of postings on Indeed listed salary information in February 2024, versus 22% in January 2019.

Posting doesn’t create the gap. It makes it visible at a moment you choose, instead of one you’re forced into. If the gap can’t be explained, that’s a pay-structure problem, not a posting problem.

“My competitors will see what I pay”

They already know. They interview your former employees, and the first thing a candidate says is what they used to earn.

This fear is real but misdirected. In a ZipRecruiter survey, 44% of employers worry that transparency will steer the best candidates toward competitors who post more. That’s a concern about how competitive your salaries are, not about publishing them. If you pay below market, silence doesn’t protect you: it just delays the moment the candidate finds out — usually at the third meeting, after tying up four hours of your time.

“I lose my negotiating room”

True if you post a number. Not true if you post a range.

A reasonable range says two things at once: here’s the ballpark, and here’s what’s still open to discuss. That’s the model the provinces that legislated chose. In Ontario, since January 2026, employers with 25 or more employees must post the salary or a range no wider than $50,000.

What silence costs you

Now, the other column.

ZipRecruiter’s market data shows that postings with salary information receive on average 50% more applications and are three times more likely to attract quality candidates. A Gartner survey of nearly 3,500 candidates shows that 44% of them flat-out skip postings with no salary information.

Read that last figure carefully. It’s not 44% of random candidates. It’s the ones who filter — so the ones who have choices, who have a job, who don’t apply everywhere just to see. Your empty field screens out exactly the people you were trying to attract, and lets everyone else through.

You don’t get fewer applications. You get just as many, worse targeted.

The math

Put the two columns side by side.

Quebec doesn’t require anything of you. The province hasn’t legislated on pay transparency, unlike Ontario, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island. So this isn’t a compliance question. It’s a business decision, and it’s made on the numbers.

Start small: a range, on your next posting, changing nothing else. You’ll see the difference in the pile within a week.