One counterpoint. We (hiring managers and team leads) complained up the chain for a while that we couldn't hire or retain skilled developers. The state Dept. of Personnel did an industry salary survey, using tools like this, and concluded that developers working for our state were significantly underpaid and recommended a salary increase, which apparently is now being debated by Governor and Office of Financial Management.

So these kinds of reports are useful for supporting our answers to questions like "Why do you say none of the applicants for this developer position are qualified" when we answer "because you'll only offer $50k/year".

Now as for whether that will actually play out and result in salary increases remains to be seen.

I'm not the biggest fan of Linkedin, but this strikes me as quite cynical. I've been recruiting internally for a number of good startups and I've used salary transparency to advocate for better offers for prospective candidates. There will be a few bad actors as there already exist, but I do think this is a step in the right direction towards at least giving prospective employees a better understanding of their own worth.

I would assume that there is otherwise generally information asymmetry in the labour market, in the sense that employers usually have more knowledge of salaries than employees. Making good information openly available to both parties should benefit the party with less information more: the employee.

I'd have to disagree. Large companies spend a lot of money on their approach to compensation. They hire outside consultants to benchmark their pay relative to competitors. I've worked at jobs where pay has gone up due to such engagements. Having this data on LinkedIn isn't going to change that process.

Most people don't work at large companies though.

Could be beneficial on both sides. Image a woman getting an offer, she can see the average pay and compare hers to that, so she can request equal pay.

I find most companies are generally in the know on how well they're paying their employees (employee retention, counter-offers, etc), it's the employees that lack this information.

I'd say the exact opposite. No company pays above market average by accident.

Yeah, sometimes companies understand that paying above market rate increases retention and this has pays all kinds of dividends for the company.

But they have to be fairly on the ball, and many people just aren't.

At the same time, if they are paying less than the average, won't that prompt them to at least move up to that?

Probably not, no incentive. Some hiring managers will put the pressure on the prospect to ask for more. If you can hire a quality employee for a little less than average, your bottom line comes out better.