Is It Normal for Companies to Post Wide or Vague Salary Ranges to Meet Legal Requirements?
A job posting lists a salary range so wide it barely narrows anything down, spanning tens of thousands of dollars for the same title. It technically satisfies a pay transparency requirement, but it doesn’t feel like it’s actually telling you much of anything useful before you apply.
At a glance
Yes, this is a common and generally lawful practice in places where salary range disclosure is required. Pay transparency laws typically require that a good-faith range be posted, but they don’t usually mandate how narrow that range has to be, which leaves room for employers to post a wide span while remaining technically compliant. The range satisfies the letter of the requirement without necessarily giving applicants a precise sense of what a specific offer will look like.
Why the requirement exists in the first place
Salary disclosure laws, which now exist in a number of states and cities, generally aim to give job seekers more information upfront and to reduce pay disparities that can widen when compensation is negotiated privately and inconsistently. The underlying goal is transparency, but the legal text usually focuses on whether a range was disclosed at all, not on how tightly that range reflects the actual expected offer for a given candidate. Employment rules tend to vary this way by state generally, much like how quickly a final paycheck has to be issued depends on where the job is located.
Why employers post wide ranges anyway
- Flexibility across experience levels. A single posting sometimes covers a range of candidate experience, so the range reflects a genuine span of possible outcomes rather than vagueness for its own sake.
- Uncertainty before interviewing. Some employers haven’t finalized a specific budget for the role until later in the process, so a wide range hedges against committing early.
- Negotiating room. A broad range preserves flexibility in later compensation discussions, which can work in the employer’s favor as much as the candidate’s, not unlike how some employers lean on other pay-adjacent tools instead of raising base salary.
- Multi-market postings. A range covering several office locations or regions with different costs of living may look wide because it’s covering more ground than a single-market listing would.
What a wide range does and doesn’t tell you
A wide posted range confirms a rough ceiling and floor but doesn’t reveal where a specific offer is likely to land for a specific candidate. Factors like experience, internal budget for the role, and how negotiation typically plays out all influence where within that range an actual offer falls. Treating the top of a wide range as a realistic expectation, without more information, can lead to a mismatched sense of what’s actually on the table.
How people generally approach a wide range
- Ask directly during the process. It’s common and generally accepted to ask a recruiter early on where a role typically lands within a posted range, given the specific requirements.
- Research comparable roles. Cross-referencing a posting against public pay data for similar titles and locations can help narrow the likely realistic band.
- Treat the range as a starting point, not a quote. A wide range functions more like a boundary than a firm number, useful for filtering out roles that are clearly out of range rather than for predicting an exact offer.
The takeaway
A wide or vague-feeling salary range usually reflects the limits of what disclosure laws currently require, not necessarily an attempt to mislead. It’s worth treating the number as one data point among several, alongside direct questions asked during the hiring process and outside research into comparable roles, rather than as a precise preview of a final offer. Understanding why the range is wide in the first place makes it easier to use the information for what it’s actually good for.