The Median Advertised Annual Salary in the U.S. Tops $100,000. But Most Job Listings Still Hide The Pay.

A new analysis of more than 3 million job openings across the United States found that advertised annual salary ranges had a median midpoint of $107,450, even as more than half of employers' listings provided no information about how much the positions paid.

The findings, published by Headcount Labst, covered more than 3 million openings from 80,496 employers. Only 44.7% of those listings disclosed compensation, leaving approximately 1.66 million positions without published pay information.

Among the 453,497 listings that included annual salary figures, the median midpoint was $107,450. That means half of the advertised annual salary ranges had a midpoint above that amount, while the other half fell below it.

The figure does not represent the median salary earned by American workers or the typical compensation across all available jobs. It reflects the midpoint of salary ranges disclosed by a particular group of employers, excluding positions that did not publish annual compensation figures.

The analysis also examined 703,821 listings advertising hourly wages. Their median pay midpoint was $21.08 an hour, with the middle half of advertised rates falling between $17.50 and $28.50.

For annual salaries, the 25th percentile stood at $75,297, while the 75th percentile reached $158,000. These figures describe the distribution of posted salary-range midpoints rather than confirmed offers or wages ultimately paid to employees.

Pay transparency varied considerably across the country, with a gap of 46 percentage points between the states with the highest and lowest disclosure rates.

Washington led the nation, with 70.9% of job postings specifying compensation. New York followed at 69.9%, while Massachusetts reported 68.9%. Maine and California also ranked among the leading states, with disclosure rates of 68% and 67.6%, respectively.

At the other end of the ranking, Mississippi had the lowest disclosure rate at 24.9%, followed by Louisiana at 25.6% and Alabama at 26.9%. Several states with large employment markets also recorded relatively low levels of transparency.

In Texas, just 29.7% of the 282,222 available positions disclosed pay, while Florida reported a disclosure rate of 31.8% across 174,801 openings. California, which had the largest number of listed vacancies at 298,261, reported pay information in 67.6% of its postings.

The differences coincide with varying state requirements governing salary disclosures. Under Washington's Equal Pay and Opportunities Act, employers with at least 15 employees must include a wage scale or salary range, along with descriptions of benefits and other compensation, in covered job advertisements.

New York's Pay Transparency Law similarly requires covered employers with four or more employees to disclose salary information in advertisements for positions performed in the state.

The Headcount Labs data does not establish whether individual employers are complying with applicable laws, and the state-level differences cannot be attributed to legislation alone.

Beyond salaries, the analysis offers a closer look at the positions employers were advertising in mid-October. Of the more than 3 million vacancies examined, only 209,357 had been posted during the seven days preceding the October 14 snapshot.

Half of all available listings had been posted for at least 43 days, while 937,442 had been advertised for more than 90 days. The age of a listing does not necessarily indicate whether an employer is still actively interviewing candidates or how urgently the position needs to be filled.

The report also found that relatively few listings explicitly advertised remote work. Only 67,747 positions, or 2.3% of all openings, were identified as remote. Another 63,535 were listed as hybrid, while 551,148 specified on-site work.

However, 77.3% of postings did not state a work arrangement, making it impossible to determine the actual share of remote opportunities from those figures alone.

Among the positions that did specify an arrangement, 9.9% were remote and 9.3% were hybrid. Headcount Labs said its figures were compiled from employers' career sites and job boards, with new market snapshots generated approximately every two weeks.