Mandatory salary disclosure on every job advert will cost employers £4,859 more per young hire and push more cases into an already overloaded tribunal system. That is the warning from Alys Denby, opinion and features editor of City AM, as the government frames its "say what you pay" rules as an answer to Britain's NEETs crisis.

The policy, championed by Andy Burnham, would force every employer to publish the salary upfront. A statement from No 10 defending the measure reads: "Applying for a first job can be daunting, particularly after time out of work or education. For young people taking their first steps into work, knowing the salary upfront helps young people focus on the right opportunities and apply with greater confidence."

Denby's verdict is blunt: nearly one million young people are not avoiding work because salaries are hidden. They are staying out of the labour market because welfare pays too well and job opportunities are too few — and the shortage of openings, she argues, is a direct consequence of the government's own employment taxes and regulations.

What do the numbers say about hiring young workers?

The Centre for Policy Studies has calculated that minimum wage increases mean it now costs £4,859 more to hire a full-time worker aged 18-20 than it did in 2024.

On top of that, the Employment Rights Act has significantly widened the scope of employment tribunals. The legislation attracts the support of just 11 per cent of executives, according to MakeUK. Denby warns that pay transparency can only heap more pressure on a justice system already unable to cope with its existing workload.

Her conclusion for practitioners: far from expanding opportunities for young people, yet more regulation will simply make it costlier and riskier to hire them at all.

How would disclosure change hiring decisions?

The rules would replicate a public sector model of pay bands through which an employee can easily ascend, Denby writes. Most private sector jobs do not work that way.

She offers her own career as the concrete case. Early in her career, she took a pay cut for a more interesting role — a decision, she says, without which readers would not be reading her column today. "I doubt I'd have taken that leap if I'd known in advance it would mean less money at first."

The implication for employers and jobseekers alike:

• Salary disclosure could deter jobseekers from taking a chance on a role they think is beyond their reach.
• It could prevent some businesses from attracting talent.
• A single figure cannot capture all the perks of a job.
• Companies may have good reason to withhold salary information from competitors.
• Employers may want to retain discretion to adjust pay based on experience.

What does the policy signal about the government?

Denby sees the disclosure rules as more than an administrative tweak. The breezy language of "say what you pay", she argues, conceals what she calls the Burnham administration's fundamental hostility to business.

In her framing, Labour treats businesses as "an unfortunate excrescence of the economy that must be controlled as tightly as possible". Employers, she counters, are not a side effect of growth but essential to it.

For hiring managers and founders, the practical stakes are immediate. Once salaries appear on adverts, colleagues can compare pay — including cases where an expensive new recruit out-earns longer-serving staff. Employers, Denby writes, would have to explain to all their staff exactly how they calculate their relative worth.

The deeper warning for the business community: each new layer of disclosure, taxation and tribunal exposure compounds the last. If hiring a young worker already costs nearly £5,000 more than it did a year ago, transparency mandates risk pricing the youngest workers out of the market entirely — the opposite of what the policy intends.

Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City AM.