On June 7, 2026, the deadline passed for every EU member state to make salary ranges in job ads a legal floor, ban questions about a candidate’s pay history, and void pay-secrecy clauses. Most of the bloc missed it: only four countries, Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Malta, had full implementing law in force on time, but the direction of travel is set, and the European Commission has confirmed the deadline will not move.
The same shift is running through the United States, where pay transparency rules are no longer a coastal experiment. The practical upshot for job seekers everywhere is unusual: the employer’s budget number increasingly sits in the job ad, and decades of behavioral research says most candidates still never ask for more.
What the transparency wave covers now
On the US side, trackers counted 17 states plus multiple municipalities with active pay transparency laws at the start of 2026, affecting a large share of employers that post jobs nationally, and more states are considering bills. Virginia’s and Maine’s requirements took effect in July 2026. Typical rules require a good-faith pay range in job postings, and several also require a general description of benefits. In the EU, employers with 250 or more staff begin gender pay gap reporting in June 2027 on 2026 data, with smaller employers following on staggered schedules, and the directive’s recruitment-stage rights apply now where transposed.
Ranges in ads compress the information gap that made negotiation a guessing game. A candidate in Milan, Vilnius, or New York can anchor to the posted maximum instead of asking peers what the job pays.
In a Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 US workers published in April 2023, only 32% of men and 28% of women said they asked for higher pay the last time they were hired.
But most people still do not ask
The behavioral record has barely moved. In a Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 US workers published in April 2023, only 32% of men and 28% of women said they asked for higher pay the last time they were hired. Among those who did ask, 28% got the figure they requested and another 38% got more than the original offer but less than they asked for, so 65% of askers improved on the first number. Only 35% came away with nothing changed, which means asking mostly works in expectation.
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Read More →The reasons for not asking skew young. Among workers ages 18 to 29 who did not negotiate, 46% said they did not feel comfortable asking, the highest share of any age group. For anyone deciding what skill to practice before a first offer call, the evidence suggests the discomfort is the bottleneck, not the math.
The stakes of staying silent are large. Linda Babcock, a Carnegie Mellon University economist who has studied gender and negotiation for two decades, calculated in a 2025 Forbes interview that failing to negotiate can cost about $1.5 million in lost earnings over a career, because every later raise compounds off the opening base. Earlier survey data cited by The College Investor found only 38% of new graduates negotiated after receiving an offer, while 76% of the employers surveyed said those who negotiated appeared confident, not demanding, and three-quarters said they had room to raise offers by 5 to 10%.
The counterargument worth taking seriously
Skeptics note that posted ranges can cut both ways. If an ad states a broad band, the posted minimum can quietly become the default anchor employers steer toward, and candidates who negotiate hard against the maximum may read as not respecting the band. There is also uneven enforcement: the EU’s own tracking shows Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands all missed the June 2026 deadline, so a job seeker’s legal rights currently depend on national postcodes, a patchwork that will take infringement proceedings and local laws to resolve.
That counterpoint does not erase the data. With ranges public, the cost of asking one clarifying question, whether the number is negotiable, has dropped near zero, while survey evidence shows employers rarely withdraw offers over polite negotiation.
Among workers ages 18 to 29 who did not negotiate, 46% said they did not feel comfortable asking, the highest share of any age group.
What to watch next: the European Commission’s response to the late member states, which so far has not included formal notice letters specific to the directive; whether more US states join the 17 already in force; and, on the individual level, whether the next offer call ends the way roughly 70% of them do in Pew’s data, with no question asked at all.
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