Every day it seems there’s a new story about how insanely out of balance the working world has become. Enabled by political rhetoric, companies seem to be making it more and more clear that they view workers not as colleagues but as property who should be grateful to have a job at all.
A new survey shows the absurd heights this hubris has risen to recently, as it found that workers are not just being ghosted, but often being ghosted for asking the most basic possible questions. Questions that, in fact, touch on the whole reason we all need jobs in the first place.
The data comes from job-search platform sidehustles.com, a listings service primarily used for jobs in the gig economy. And while their data does focus most heavily on people in that job sector, it nonetheless gives a pretty bracing view of how unreasonable many companies have become.
Sidehustles.com surveyed 742 workers who are either freelancers or do freelance work on the side while working a full-time or part-time position, a cohort that is growing exponentially in our punishing economy. One recent survey found that the proportion of workers with a side hustle crossed the 50% mark for the first time this year, and unsurprisingly, the proportion of millennials and Gen Zers with a side hustle is even higher.
Sidehustles.com’s survey was conducted to see how pay transparency factors into these workers’ job search approach and decision-making, and spoiler alert: It’s very important! Pay, after all, is why we all have jobs in the first place. We’re not out here signing 40+ hours away each week for the fun of it.
But their data shows that a lot of employers seem to have missed this memo. 1 in 10 workers surveyed said they’d been ghosted by a recruiter or hiring manager as soon as they asked about a position’s pay scale. And unsurprisingly, workers have a lot of feelings about that.
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Sure, 1 in 10 is only 10%, meaning the other 90% are responding to pay transparency questions in some way. Still, it’s a sizable proportion of workers, given not only how central pay is to a job, but also how important job seekers say pay transparency is to them.
The survey revealed that it is job seekers’ #1 concern, in fact. More important to them than other top priorities like work-life balance, benefits, or a company’s work-from-home policies. Which is saying something, given how many concerns about these other topics have upended the working world in recent years.
And accordingly, workers said that a lack of pay transparency is a deal-breaker for them. Nearly 7 in 10 said they don’t trust employers that aren’t open about pay, with 74% assuming it means they pay poorly, 49% suspecting the company has high turnover, and 35% assuming the culture is toxic. Which, you know, are all pretty solid assumptions.
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Sidehustles.com’s survey looked at workers in several industries, from tech and media to healthcare and skilled trades. Across the board, every single industry reported that pay transparency is getting worse, not better.
Technology and IT were the “best worst,” if you will, with only 75% of employees saying pay transparency wasn’t improving. Every other industry was worse, in some cases substantially so.
Which is silly given what we know about the way pay transparency affects open positions. Human Resources research firm Gartner found in 2023 that a lack of pay transparency makes it harder to fill a position and drags out the recruiting process, as does a lack of clarity about work-from-home schemes.
Mizuno K | Pexels | Canva Pro
Accordingly, Sidehustles.com’s survey revealed that at least 25% of workers won’t even consider applying to a job if it doesn’t have pay transparency, and another 28% said they had dipped out of the hiring process after being stonewalled by a recruiter about the topic. Another 11% reported bailing even after multiple interviews.
That’s a lot of wasted time and energy, and in the incredibly expensive recruiting process, which experts say can range from 50% to 3x the position’s yearly pay, it’s also a lot of wasted money. All because companies don’t want to pay more than a poverty wage. The math really ain’t mathing, as the internet likes to say, but that’s certainly nothing new.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
