Compliance Landscape

Who's following the $50k rule?

O. Reg. 476/24 limits salary range width to $50,000 for jobs under $200k. High-compensation roles (annual max >$200k) are fully exempt from disclosure requirements.

Compliant

71%

Range width ≤ $50k — within the legal limit set by O. Reg. 476/24.

Non-compliant

Ontario ESA employers where range width exceeds $50,000.

Exempt

12%

Max salary > $200k — the $50k width rule doesn't apply to these roles.

Federal employers

12%

Banks & telecoms — governed by Canada Labour Code, not Ontario ESA. Wide ranges not counted as violations.

Note: Percentages reflect share of all current postings. The four groups add to 100%. "Federal employers" are shown separately because they disclose salary voluntarily — their range widths are excluded from the non-compliant count.

What the rule says

If this is your first time looking at Ontario pay transparency data, the basic idea is simple: some employers now have to put pay information directly into public job postings, but there are still important exceptions and limits.

Who

25+ Ontario employees

Smaller Ontario employers are outside the job-posting requirement.

Where

Public external job ad

The rule is about public postings ordinary applicants can see.

Pay rule

Range must fit inside $50k

That is the main compliance test for roles under $200,000.

Exception

Jobs over $200k are exempt

They still may disclose pay, but the $50k width cap does not apply.

Step 1

The rule only applies to larger Ontario employers

The job-posting requirements apply to employers with 25 or more employees in Ontario on the day the posting goes live.

Step 2

The posting has to be public

The rule is aimed at publicly advertised job postings — in practice, the external job ads ordinary applicants can see.

Step 3

Most salary ranges cannot be wider than $50,000

If a role pays under $200,000, the disclosed range must be $50,000 wide or less. That is the core rule this page tracks.

Step 4

Jobs over $200k are treated differently

If the top end of the compensation is above $200,000, the posting is not subject to the $50,000 width cap.

Ontario ESA: mandatory disclosure Federal employers: often voluntary disclosure

What else employers must disclose

AI use in hiring If artificial intelligence is used to screen, assess, or select candidates, that must be disclosed in the posting.

✓

Whether the job is a real vacancy The employer must say whether the posting is for an existing vacancy.

No Canadian-experience requirement Public postings and application forms cannot require "Canadian experience."

Decision notice after interview Interviewed candidates must be told the hiring decision within 45 days.

Important context: some well-known employers in our data, especially banks, telecoms, and other federally regulated firms, are not governed by this Ontario posting rule. They may still publish salary ranges voluntarily, but they are not counted against the Ontario $50,000 cap in our compliance analysis.

This site focuses mainly on the salary-range part of the rule, because that is the piece that can be measured consistently across thousands of postings.

Range-Cap Compliance

Active postings vs the $50,000 cap

Provincially regulated postings measured against the O. Reg. 476/24 range-width cap. Counts use today's active postings only; federally regulated employers (banks, telecoms — Canada Labour Code) and exempt postings (upper end above $200k) are excluded. These aggregates recalculate nightly. This auto-refreshed page does not rank employers by name — named analyses belong in dated, fact-checked reports.

Width-cap snapshot

Data snapshot: 2026-07-24 · recomputed from data/jobs.json on every refresh

Aggregate finding

9% of in-scope active postings (474 of 5,359) disclose a salary range wider than the $50,000 cap. Median range width among over-cap postings: $63,500. Width alone does not establish a violation in individual cases — exemptions and posting context apply; see the compliance report for methodology.

How far over the cap?

Over-cap active postings by how much their range width exceeds $50,000.

Regulated vs federal vs exempt

Where today's salary-valid active postings sit relative to the rule's scope.

Over-cap share by job category

Share of each category's in-scope active postings with range width over $50,000. Categories with fewer than 30 in-scope postings omitted.

Range Quality Analysis

Range or just a number?

Not every "salary range" is a real compensation band. A range spread ratio (width ÷ midpoint) below 15% is more likely a fixed pay rate disclosed as a range — semantically different from a structured band. This matters when comparing employers or deciding whether to negotiate.

Absolute width distribution

Regulated postings only (max ≤$200k). Red line = $50k compliance limit.

Within limit (≤$50k)

Exceeds limit (>$50k)

Range spread ratio

Width as % of midpoint salary. Industry standard: 25–55% is a typical salary band.

Pay point (<15%)

Structured band (15–65%)

Wide (>65%)

Median spread ratio by sector

Median range spread ratio across job categories. Regulated postings only. Green = within typical band; grey = pay-point heavy; amber = wide.

Pay point vs. salary range: A spread ratio below 15% (e.g. $144k–$148k) reflects a fixed compensation rate — the employer knows exactly what they'll pay and the "range" is nominal. This is common at firms with rigid job-level pricing. It is not inherently worse, just less informative for negotiation.

What's a standard band? Compensation research places a typical salary band at ±15–25% of midpoint (30–50% spread ratio). Ontario's median regulated job posts a spread of ~36%, suggesting most employers are within the standard range — but 12% of all regulated postings are effectively single pay points.

Cross-Category Patterns

What the skill list can tell you

Before exploring the charts: two structural patterns appear consistently across every job category in this dataset — understanding them changes how you read any job posting.

Consistent discount signal

Generic skills mark entry-level roles — not skill value

Customer Service, Communication, Problem Solving consistently appear 27–41% below the median salary in every category where they show up with enough data. This isn't because these skills are worthless — it's because they're listed by employers filling frontline and junior positions, regardless of industry.

A Finance job listing "Customer Service" is likely a bank teller role ($59k), not an analyst ($100k+). The skill is a proxy for the role tier, not the skill itself.

Consistent premium signal

Specific and cross-functional skills signal senior roles

Technical Leadership, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Product/Project Management command 24–39% above median across every category they appear in. These skills require domain expertise and are harder to fake in a job description — employers can only list them when the role genuinely demands them.

"Technical Leadership" in IT pays 39% above IT median. In Engineering, 27% above. The signal is consistent because the specialization is real.

How to read a job posting

A job's skill list can point to seniority

The data suggests a simple heuristic: count the generic skills vs. specific skills in any job description.

If the "required skills" section is dominated by Communication, Customer Service, Problem Solving, Teamwork — the employer is likely filling a commodity role. Salary will reflect that.

If the required skills include Technical Leadership, Cross-Functional Collaboration, specific tools or methodologies — the employer is describing something harder to find, and the salary follows.

This pattern holds across Finance, Engineering, IT, Operations, Sales, and Product — it isn't a category quirk.

Skill × Salary Analysis

Which skills show higher pay?

Comparing median salaries for jobs that list each skill against the category median — sourced from Ontario's legally-mandated salary disclosures. Select a category to explore.

Select category

Methodology & caveats

Correlation, not causation. These skills co-occur with seniority — we can't isolate the skill's independent effect without controlling for job level and firm size.
Extraction quality varies. Skills were extracted from raw job descriptions. Generic phrases like "problem solving" may be extracted inconsistently across postings.
Minimum 15 jobs per skill. Low-sample findings are excluded, but sample sizes still vary widely — higher-n findings carry more weight.
Ontario only. O. Reg. 476/24 salary disclosures. Results may not generalize to other labour markets.

See what Ontario employers disclose.