Good practice Imported

Austria's Mandatory Minimum-Salary Disclosure in Job Ads (Equal Treatment Act, 2011)

Austria · Vienna · See the Austria profile · See the Vienna profile

Top 56% 63/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2011 Austrian employers must state the minimum pay offered in job advertisements. Studies find a small narrowing of the gender wage gap, concentrated in urgent vacancies, and no effect on gender sorting across occupations or firms.

Details

Promoter: Austrian Federal Ministry / Social Partners (Equal Treatment Act, GlBG)
Period: 2011–present
Keywords: pay transparency, recruitment, job advertisements, gender pay gap

Description

In 2011 Austria amended its Equal Treatment Act so that job advertisements must state the minimum pay on offer (collective-agreement minimum, with an indication of willingness to pay more).
The policy has been evaluated by independent economists. Bamieh and Ziegler (Economic Policy, vol. 40, 2025) find a substantial gender gap of about 15 log points but conclude that wage transparency did not reduce gender sorting into occupations or employers.
A separate research paper on mandatory wage posting and bargaining reports a small effect of wage information that reduces the gender gap somewhat; the effect is strong and significant for urgently filled vacancies, driven by higher female wages, and absent for non-urgent openings.
Lesson for transfer: posting a pay floor is cheap to administer and can help in bargaining, but on its own it does not address structural segregation; a posted floor is weaker than a range.

Read the full analysis: https://genderandagency.univie.ac.at/forschung/detailansicht/pure/dcdad874-adb0-4de7-b8b4-c9a3a95ddca3/show/publ/Pure

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-10-07
Austrian Federal Ministry / Social Partners (Equal Treatment Act, GlBG) — accessed 2026-10-07
Bamieh & Ziegler, Economic Policy (University of Vienna record) — accessed 2026-10-07
Mandatory wage posting, bargaining and the gender wage gap (seminar, Univ. of Bozen-Bolzano) — accessed 2026-10-07

Attachments

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Quality score: 63/100

How is this calculated?

Top 56% in this catalogue (1040 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Transferability / replicability2/3

Job-ad pay-floor rules are simple and similar rules now exist in several EU states under Directive 2023/970, but Austria's floor-only design limits transfer value.

Impact on gender equality0/1

Independent evidence finds no reduction in occupational or firm sorting despite a 15 log-point gap, so structural impact on gender equality is not demonstrated.

Effectiveness1/1

Research finds a small gap reduction, strong only for urgent vacancies and absent for non-urgent ones.

Efficiency1/1

The obligation is a one-line disclosure in adverts with negligible employer cost.

Evaluated outcomes1/1

Peer-reviewed and working-paper evaluations with administrative data exist (Bamieh & Ziegler 2025; wage-posting bargaining study).

Sustainability1/1

The rule has remained in force since 2011 within the Equal Treatment Act.

Achievement / evidence0/1

Evidence shows modest, conditional effects only, not a sustained closing of the gap.

Gender-mainstreaming embedding0/1

The measure is a standalone disclosure rule, not embedded in a wider gender-mainstreaming framework.

Curator validation1/1

Two independent academic sources on different domains document the design and findings.

Cite this

Evidoria. Austria's Mandatory Minimum-Salary Disclosure in Job Ads (Equal Treatment Act, 2011). Persistent ID: 3fd3cee3-3e90-4d5f-adaa-4dc954f8238a.

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