Pay range in job ads under Article 5: how wide is too wide?

The text of Article 5 is one sentence long and procedurally clear: applicants for a job have the right to receive, from the prospective employer, information about the initial pay or its range, based on objective, gender-neutral criteria, in writing, prior to the interview.

The grey zone sits in three words. "Or its range." The Directive does not define how wide. It does not specify whether the range is a band, a hiring range, or a posted minimum. It establishes the right, leaves the implementation to member states, and leaves the practice to employers.

The result is a wide spread of compliance behaviour. Three patterns dominate. Two of them defeat the purpose Article 5 was written to serve.

The three patterns of range disclosure

Pattern 1 — the "compliance range"

Too wide

€42,000 — 100% spread — €84,000

€42k width · 1.00× ratio

A band wide enough to fit an analyst, a senior individual contributor, and a team lead. Posted because the company has not decided what the role actually is, or because the legal team chose maximum optionality. The range exists. The information it communicates does not. A candidate cannot anchor expectations; a court cannot evaluate fairness against it; a salary-history substitute does not emerge from it.

Pattern 2 — the "we'll see at offer" range

Too narrow

€42,000 €55–58k (single point in band) €84,000

€3k width · 0.05× ratio

A "range" so narrow it functions as a single number. Often used when the hiring team has already decided what they will offer. Compliant with the letter of Article 5; non-compliant with its spirit and with Article 6. If the range does not contain the offer that gets made, the disclosed range was not a range. If it does, it was not a range either — it was the offer.

Pattern 3 — the band-anchored hiring range

Defensible

€42,000 €48–58k (hiring range) €84,000

€10k width · 0.21× ratio

A hiring range that is a defined slice of the full band. Anchored to a job-evaluation category (the equal-value structure under Article 4(4)). Wide enough to absorb experience and market signal; narrow enough to communicate the role's actual position. The offer that gets made lands inside it. The rationale for landing at any specific point is documented in advance.

Pattern 3 is harder to produce. It requires the equal-value structure to exist before the job posting is written. The other two patterns are recognisable because they do not — they each substitute the absence of structure with extreme width or extreme narrowness.

Three properties of a range that actually is one

Anchored to the band, not invented for the role

The hiring range is a slice of the full salary band for the role's job evaluation category. The full band might run €42k–€84k. The hiring range — the slice posted publicly — is a defined entry-zone within that band, typically the bottom 25–40% of band penetration. The slice is not improvised per requisition; it follows from the band architecture.

Tight enough to anchor, wide enough to absorb signal

Useful hiring ranges sit in the 0.15–0.30× ratio (the top of the range is 15–30% above the bottom). Narrower than 10% reads as a single number; wider than 35% reads as a non-answer. The width has to leave room for experience and negotiated specifics without dissolving into noise.

The offer lands inside it

This is the operational test. If the offer that ends up being made consistently lands outside the disclosed range — above or below — the disclosed range was a fiction. Article 5 is read backward from the offer letter; ranges that do not predict their offers do not satisfy the obligation.

A simple width heuristic

For specialist and mid-level roles, a ratio between 0.18× and 0.28× tends to be defensible. Below 0.15× the band reads as a single point. Above 0.35× the band's information value collapses. The exact width within that envelope depends on the job's variability (a role with heavy market premium variance can defensibly be wider; a role with consistent market pricing can be narrower).

Worth noting

Article 5 also requires the criteria used to set pay to be objective and gender-neutral. This is not a separate clause to remember at a different stage — it is what makes the range defensible. A range without explicit criteria behind it is harder to defend than the same numerical range with a written rationale linking it to the equal-value structure.

What the range does for the negotiation

The pre-PTD negotiation pattern starts with the candidate's expectation, anchored by their salary history. Article 5 removes salary history as a question and replaces the anchor with the employer's disclosed range. The candidate enters the conversation knowing the corridor the offer will sit in.

This changes negotiation in two directions. Candidates know less about the upper bound of what they could ask; employers know less about the candidate's reservation price. The aggregate effect is a tighter convergence around the band's defined hiring range — which is the directive's intended effect.

The range that defeats Article 5 is the one that doesn't predict the offer that gets made.

Where the diagnostic starts

The single highest-leverage piece of architecture for Article 5 compliance is the band structure that sits behind the range. Without it, every posted range is improvised; with it, every posted range follows.

HireGapCheck™ produces a defensible offer band per role — anchored to internal equity, market signal, and the four objective criteria of Article 4(4). Useful when the question is what the range should be, not whether to disclose it.