Salary? Silence.

Key findings

1. Only 4.7% of job postings state a specific salary. Of 47,240 full-text job postings analysed in July 2026, 2,225 contained a specific salary figure (an amount or a range). Across the full May–July period: 5,063 of 123,750 postings (4.1%).

2. The share is rising — since the EU deadline passed. May: 3.0% → June: 4.1% → July: 4.7%. The transposition deadline for the EU Pay Transparency Directive expired on 7 June 2026. The increase of roughly one half within three months falls precisely into that window. (Note: the May figure covers a partial month from 16 May onwards, see Methodology.)

3. Transparency comes from intermediaries — employers themselves stay silent. All 14 private senders among the 15 largest salary disclosers operate as recruitment agencies, temporary staffing or recruiting firms (among them Manpower, DIS AG, Michael Page, ARWA Personaldienstleistungen and a specialised medical recruiter) — not a single company visibly hiring for its own operations makes the list. The largest single sender, a staffing provider, accounts for roughly 9% of all salary disclosures in the dataset on its own (464 of 5,063). Fifteenth place goes to the Oberfinanzdirektion Baden-Württemberg, a public-sector employer — consistent with the legal position: for public employers the EU directive already has direct effect under CJEU case law, for private employers only once the German transposition act is in force.

4. In the highest-volume occupations the rate is close to zero. Among them several recognised shortage occupations: medical specialists 0.8% (8 of 984 postings), machine and plant operators 0.4% (6 of 1,702), cutting machine operators 0.6%, chefs 1.1%. Among warehouse and transport workers, not one of 910 postings contained a salary figure.

The legal framework (as of 28 July 2026)

• Directive (EU) 2023/970 (the Pay Transparency Directive) entered into force on 6 June 2023. Transposition deadline for member states: 7 June 2026.
• Germany let the deadline pass. No ministerial draft bill exists. The commission on "low-bureaucracy implementation" appointed by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs (BMBFSFJ) submitted its final report in November 2025; by its own account the ministry is in internal consultations, without a timetable. A binding transposition act is widely expected no earlier than 2027.
• Until then the Pay Transparency Act of 2017 (Entgelttransparenzgesetz) continues to apply unchanged — it contains no obligation to state a salary in job postings.
• Core obligations of the directive that will arrive with transposition: employers must inform applicants of the starting salary or its range before the job interview (in the posting or beforehand), and asking about salary history becomes unlawful.
• Public-sector employers cannot rely on the missing transposition: public-sector employees can, under certain conditions, invoke the directive directly.

Outlook

The measured increase (3.0% → 4.7%) shows that part of the market is already preparing — led by staffing providers, for whom pay transparency is a conversion tool, and by the public sector, where the directive already takes effect. The large majority of private employers are waiting for the German act. Once the amendment to the Entgelttransparenzgesetz arrives, employers will have to disclose the starting salary before the job interview — in the posting or beforehand by other means. For more than 95% of postings that means changing current practice. Until then, the burden of the salary question stays with applicants. Anyone who wants to know today what a job pays finds the answer in fewer than one in twenty postings.

Methodology

• Data basis: 219,403 job postings (Germany), collected 16 May – 28 July 2026, of which 123,750 with analysable full text. Only the latter enter the rates.
• Sources: 84% of the total volume comes from publicly accessible job postings of the Federal Employment Agency job board (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), supplemented by Adzuna, Arbeitnow and further job portals. All 123,750 analysed full texts originate from the Federal Employment Agency job board — the measured trend is therefore source-pure and cannot have arisen from a shift in the portal mix. Only aggregated metrics are published, no posting content.
• Detection of salary statements: Automated text pattern analysis (salary ranges, amounts in conjunction with "Gehalt/Vergütung/brutto/monatlich/jährlich"), with exclusion patterns for bonuses, premiums and allowances. Validated by random sampling: in the final configuration, 15 of 15 checked matches were genuine salary statements.
• Sender classification: The classification of the top 15 senders as recruitment agencies/staffing providers was verified company by company against the commercial register entry or the public corporate presence.
• Limitations: The May figure covers a partial month (data collection began 16 May). Postings without full text (short snippets) cannot be assessed. Occupation-level rates may be skewed by individual high-volume senders (staffing providers); occupation-level statements in this report are therefore limited to rates close to zero, which sender concentration cannot produce.
• Legal information without warranty; this report is not legal advice. Sources on the legal position: EUR-Lex (Directive (EU) 2023/970), BMBFSFJ communications on the implementation commission, professional publications by KPMG Law (June 2026) and IWW (May 2026).

About myjobhub

myjobhub.de is a tech-enabled job application service. Market Pulse continuously analyses the German job market — requirements, qualifications and conditions from hundreds of thousands of job postings. We make raw data extracts and charts relating to this report available to newsrooms on request.