For many job seekers, the hardest part of recruitment is simple: nobody tells them what the job really pays. The OECD’s new 2026 report says pay transparency is clearly spreading, but salary-range disclosure is still not standard practice in most countries. As of July/August 2025, only five OECD countries had a national rule requiring private-sector employers to include the starting salary or salary range in job advertisements: Austria, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and the Slovak Republic. At the same time, more than half of OECD countries already required some form of gender pay-gap reporting, showing that governments are moving step by step toward more openness. (oecd.org)

The biggest push now comes from the EU. Its Pay Transparency Directive was adopted in May 2023, and EU member states must turn it into national law by June 7, 2026. The rule does not always force companies to publish pay ranges directly in every job ad, but it does require employers to give applicants information about the starting pay or pay range before employment, for example in the vacancy notice or before the interview. Employers are also banned from asking about an applicant’s salary history, and job vacancy notices and job titles must be gender-neutral. Beyond recruitment, employers with at least 100 workers will face reporting duties: firms with 250+ workers must report by June 7, 2027 and every year after that; firms with 150–249 workers must report from 2027 every three years; and firms with 100–149 workers start in 2031. If reporting reveals an unjustified gender pay gap of at least 5% in a worker category and it is not fixed within six months, a joint pay assessment is required. (commission.europa.eu)

Why does this matter? Because the EU’s average unadjusted gender pay gap was still 11.1% in 2024. Transparency alone will not erase that gap overnight; the OECD warns that results depend heavily on design, enforcement and follow-up. Still, the hiring process is likely to change in a very practical way. Recruiters will need clearer pay bands, managers will need objective reasons for pay differences, and candidates may enter negotiations with better information and less guesswork. So, will salary-range disclosure become “normal”? Not everywhere, and not immediately. But in Europe, pay secrecy is starting to look less like tradition and more like a legal risk. (ec.europa.eu)