The government has announced plans to make it a legal requirement for employers to show the salary in every job advert, under a new "say what you pay" policy aimed at helping young people into work and closing the gender pay gap.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said jobseekers should know what a role pays before they spend time applying for it, and the government will bring forward legislation as soon as possible. Until the law changes, employers are being asked to publish pay voluntarily.

Most adverts still hide the pay

Government figures, drawn from the CIPD, show that fewer than half of employers — 41% — always publish a salary range in job adverts, and only 18% always publish a specific salary. A Cabinet Office consultation on pay equality, which closed on 27 October, found 94% of respondents backed greater transparency.

The government says the change will help young people make informed choices about work and stop jobseekers going through several rounds of interviews without knowing what the job actually pays.

What is still undecided

No bill has been published yet, and the government has not said which employers the rule will cover, exactly what pay information must be shown, or how it will be enforced. Those details are promised in due course.

Further reforms are expected after the final report of the Milburn Review into youth inactivity, due in the coming weeks. The announcement follows an equal pay consultation launched in the summer, and mirrors pay-transparency rules already in force across the European Union, where employers must tell jobseekers the starting salary or pay range before interview.