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Working Paper
Online Job Posts Contain Very Little Wage Information
We characterize the little wage information contained in online job posts. Wage information is rare: only 14% of posts contain any information. Of these, wage ranges are more common than point wages, and are wide on average, spanning 28% of the midpoint (e.g. $32,000-$42,000/yr). Posted wages are highly selected in low income occupations: 40% higher than wages of employed workers. High wage firms are more opaque, with more and wider ranges. We find zero correlation between wage information and local labor market tightness. We provide an example of bias in econometric inference that worsens as ...
Report
Online Job Posts Contain Very Little Wage Information
We describe the small amount of wage information in online job posts in the U.S. and how the information that is available is systematically correlated with occupation wages, firms wages, and local labor market tightness. Only 14% of posts contain any information, and 75% of all posts are accounted for by firms with pay information in less than 5% of their posts. More than half of posts with pay information list a range that, on average, is wide, spanning 28% of the midpoint (e.g. $21-28/hr or $32,000-$42,000/yr). The lack of information is not ‘missing at random’. First, postings for ...