Why Are Some Salary Ranges on Job Postings So Wide They Feel Useless?
A job posting lists a salary range that spans forty thousand dollars from bottom to top, and it’s hard not to wonder what the number actually is, or why the company didn’t just say so.
The short answer
Wide salary ranges usually exist because employers are balancing legal disclosure requirements with internal flexibility around experience level, negotiation, and budget uncertainty. A single posting sometimes covers multiple levels of seniority, or leaves room for a candidate to land anywhere in the range depending on qualifications and how negotiations go. It’s frustrating for job seekers, but it’s rarely random.
Why the range gets so wide
- Salary disclosure laws vary by location. A growing number of states and cities require a range to be posted at all, but the laws generally don’t dictate how narrow that range has to be, so some employers post a wide band to stay compliant without over-committing.
- One posting, multiple experience levels. A single job title might realistically be filled by someone early in their career or someone with a decade of experience, and the range often reflects that entire spread rather than one specific hire.
- Internal budget flexibility. Hiring budgets can shift between when a posting goes live and when an offer is made, so a wider range gives a company room to adjust without reposting the job.
- Room to negotiate. Some employers intentionally leave space in the range so there’s something to offer if a candidate pushes back on an initial number.
What a wide range does and doesn’t tell you
A wide range doesn’t reveal where a specific offer will land, but it can hint at how a company thinks about the role. A range that spans multiple seniority tiers may suggest the company is open to hiring at different experience levels — sometimes wide enough to cover a jump in responsibility similar to what happens when a promotion comes with a switch from hourly to exempt status — while a narrower range close to the top of a wide industry band can suggest a role is fairly well-defined already. Comparing this to why some coworkers doing the same job end up making different amounts helps explain part of the pattern — pay within the same title often varies based on when someone was hired, what they negotiated, and what budget existed at the time.
How people generally approach it
Rather than trying to guess the exact number behind a range, many job seekers focus on gathering more information during early conversations — asking where a specific role, given the candidate’s experience, is likely to land within the posted range. This is a fairly standard question in early-stage interviews and doesn’t require revealing a current salary. Researching typical compensation for similar roles through independent salary data sources can also help contextualize where a posted range sits relative to the broader market.
What to weigh
A wide salary range is more often a sign of structural flexibility than an attempt to mislead, though it can still make comparing job offers more difficult. Reading the full posting for clues about seniority expectations, and asking direct questions early in the process about where a role typically lands within the range, tends to produce more useful information than the range alone. Understanding the full compensation picture — not just base pay — also matters when comparing offers, since benefits and other factors can shift the real value of a role considerably. A starting salary also sets the baseline for how a 50/30/20 budget gets built in a new job, which is one more reason it’s worth trying to pin down where an offer is likely to land within a posted range.
Putting it in perspective
A wide salary range usually reflects legal requirements, internal budget uncertainty, or a broad hiring net rather than a lack of transparency on its own. Treating the range as a starting point for a conversation, rather than a final answer, is generally the most productive way to work with one.