It’s been months since legislation kicked in to force BC employers to include wages or expected salary ranges in job postings. However, according to a new report, it seems like not everyone has put this new rule into practice.
Job search site Indeed shared a report after extracting information from its published postings and found that in BC, 24% of job postings do not include the position’s wage as of February 2024.
The legislation was part of a government initiative to close BC’s gender pay gap.
Every employer in BC must include either the expected pay or the expected pay range for a specific job advertised publicly on platforms like Indeed.
Since the rules kicked in November, Indeed said BC postings that mentioned pay jumped from 49% in Q3 2023 to 76% in February 2024, “with the largest increases in sectors where mentions of pay were previously rare,” Indeed said in its report.
The company added that wage and salary information has become much more commonplace in Canadian job postings, especially amid proposed legislation in Ontario and the recent moves in BC, Newfoundland, and PEI.
Where more job descriptions increasingly mention pay, “the information provided isn’t as precise as it used to be,” Indeed said.
“In particular, fewer postings advertise exact pay levels, with more quoting ranges instead,” the company added.
After BC’s new pay transparency laws took effect, Daily Hive previously reached out to the province as British Columbians criticized the law as “pretty toothless legislation until we see the regulations.”
According to the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity, last year, there were consultations leading up to the development of the Pay Transparency Act.
“As this new requirement took effect November 1, the ministry appreciates that some employers may need time to adjust their postings to meet the new requirement,” the province said in an email statement to Daily Hive in November.
“The Ministry has reached out to employer associations and job search websites, including LinkedIn and Indeed.com, to request they take steps to ensure that employers from British Columbia include salary or wage information when posting job opportunities.”
According to Indeed, the company has made changes to its platform. For example, employers are now prompted to include pay information when they post a job ad directly to the site, it said.
The province previously said that the ministry would monitor if companies adhere to the new requirement and follow up with employers if they continue to have “non-compliant job postings.”
The province also encourages British Columbians concerned about their employer not posting pay ranges to report this to the Ministry of Finance’s Director of Pay Transparency by emailing P[email protected].
With files from Amir Ali