The government is calling for mandatory pay disclosure on job ads to help solve the NEETs crisis. Far from helping young people, this will only make things worse, says Alys Denby

Do you want your colleagues to know how much you’re paid? What if you’re out-earning someone who’s been there longer? Or what if an expensive new recruit is making more than you? And if you’re an employer, imagine having to explain to all your staff exactly how you calculate their relative worth.

Yet that is the inevitable result of the government’s plans to introduce mandatory salary disclosure in job adverts. Bizarrely, Andy Burnham is framing this as part of his efforts to tackle the NEETs crisis. A patronising missive from No 10 says: “Applying for a first job can be daunting, particularly after time out of work or education. For young people taking their first steps into work, knowing the salary upfront helps young people focus on the right opportunities and apply with greater confidence.”

I took a pay cut for a more interesting job

Nearly 1m young people aren’t eschewing work because of secret salaries, it’s because welfare is too attractive and job opportunities are too few. And the latter is a direct result of this government’s rafts of new employment taxes and regulations. The Centre for Policy Studies has calculated that increases in the minimum wage mean it now costs £4,859 more to hire a full time worker aged 18-20 than it did in 2024. Added to this the Employment Rights Act has significantly increased the scope of employment tribunals, and attracts the support of just 11 per cent of executives, according to MakeUK. Pay transparency can only heap more pressure on a justice system that is unable to cope with its existing workload. Far from expanding opportunities for young people, yet more regulation will just make it costlier and riskier to hire them at all.

Perhaps it is not surprising that a government with so little business experience wants to replicate a public sector model of pay bands through which an employee can easily ascend, but that’s not how most jobs work. Early in my career I took a pay cut for a more interesting role. You wouldn’t be reading this today if it hadn’t been for that decision, but I doubt I’d have taken that leap if I’d known in advance it would mean less money at first. Salary disclosure could put some jobseekers off taking a chance on a role they think is beyond reach and prevent some businesses attracting talent. A single figure can’t capture all the perks of a job. Many companies might have good reason to withold salary information from their competitors or may wish to retain the discretion to adjust pay based on experience.

These ‘say what you pay’ rules are couched in breezy terms, but they belie the Burnham administration’s fundamental hostility to business. Labour believes that businesses are an unfortunate excrescence of the economy that must be controlled as tightly as possible. readers do not need to be told that employers are not a side effect of growth, but essential to it.