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Online Job Posts Contain Very Little Wage Information

Author

Listed:
  • Honey Batra
  • Amanda Michaud
  • Simon Mongey

Abstract

We present six facts that characterize the little wage information contained in the universe of online job posts in the U.S. First, wage information is rare: only 14% of posts contain any wage information and the minority of these (6%) have a point wage. The majority (8%) feature a range of wages that are on average wide, spanning 28% of the midpoint (e.g. $21-28/hr or $32,000-$42,000/yr). Second, information varies systematically along the occupation-wage gradient. Third, posted wages are 40% higher than wages in BLS data in low-wage occupations and 20% lower than BLS data in high-wage occupations. Fourth, among the wages that are posted, high wage firms are more opaque, with more and wider ranges. Fifth, there is zero correlation between wage information and local labor market tightness. Sixth, of the top 20 posting private firms, none have any wage information in more than 2% of their posts. Our findings caution against treating wage data from job postings as a stand-in for administrative data. We provide an example of bias in econometric inference that worsens as wage information falls.

Suggested Citation

  • Honey Batra & Amanda Michaud & Simon Mongey, 2023. "Online Job Posts Contain Very Little Wage Information," NBER Working Papers 31984, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31984
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    Cited by:

    1. Caldwell, Sydnee & Hägele, Ingrid & Heining, Jörg, 2025. "Bargaining and Inequality in the Labor Market," IAB-Discussion Paper 202502, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    2. Auster, Sarah & Gottardi, Piero, 2024. "Sorting versus screening in decentralized markets with adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 220(C).
    3. Sekyu Choi & Benjamin Villena-Roldan & Nincen Figueroa, 2025. "Posted Wage Cyclicality: Evidence from High-Quality Vacancy Data," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 25/812, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    4. Meisenbacher, Stephen & Nestorov, Svetlozar & Norlander, Peter, 2025. "Extracting O*NET Features from the NLx Corpus to Build Public Use Aggregate Labor Market Data," MPRA Paper 126336, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Chaturvedi, Sugat & Mahajan, Kanika & Siddique, Zahra, 2025. "Gendered language in job ads and applicant behavior: Evidence from India," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    6. Escudero, Veronica & Liepmann, Hannah & Vergara, Damian, 2024. "Directed Search, Wages, and Non-wage Amenities: Evidence from an Online Job Board," IZA Discussion Papers 17211, IZA Network @ LISER.
    7. Taiyo Fukai & Keisuke Kawata & Mizuki Komura & Takahiro Toriyabe, 2025. "The wage-mismatch index: A new indicator of labor demand in the job search market," Discussion Paper Series 296, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University.
    8. Patrick M. Kline, 2025. "Labor Market Monopsony: Fundamentals and Frontiers," NBER Working Papers 33467, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General

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