Why asking job candidates about their current salary must stop

What’s your current salary?”

It’s a common question at job interviews and it’s about as welcome as a tuna milkshake the morning after a heavy night when it is posed.

It tells a potential new joiner that what they get paid will be based not on the job they’re interviewing for, on their skills, their responsibilities, their performance, but rather with reference to what their previous employers felt they were worth. Which ought to be irrelevant.

The implications of this go way beyond the understandable annoyance caused to individuals. The Fawcett Society has made a powerful case that this question bakes pay inequality into the system and plays a major role in keeping the persistent gender pay gap Britain suffers from as wide as it is.

The same is probably true for those affecting ethnic minorities and disabled people. We can monitor gender pay gaps because reporting is mandatory for employers with more than 250 staff members. It’s harder with the other two because reporting is voluntary and thus quite rare. That needs to change.

A survey of 2,200 people conducted for the society by Savanta ComRes demonstrates the scale of the problem. It found that roughly half (47 per cent) of employees had been asked the dreaded question.

Some 61 per cent of women agreed that it had damaged their confidence to negotiate for better pay, and 58 per cent said it made them feel as though a low past salary was “coming back to haunt them”.

Any alleged “value” to employers in asking it is open to debate. For a start, 63 per cent of women and 58 per cent of men said they would think more highly of employers that didn’t ask it, which is worthy of note because labour shortages do (potentially) give workers more choice.

But nearly four in ten (39 per cent) also said they lied.

It’s interesting to speculate on who might be more likely to lie. I’m guessing that women, minorities and disabled people (where I speak from personal experience) would be less likely to do so through feeling less confident about matters related to employment generally.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for doing so, mind. If an employer is going to ask a cynical question they deserve a cynical and dishonest response.

Women, black and minority ethnic and disabled workers suffer discrimination in the workplace. While it might be illegal, it clearly still happens. We know they tend to earn less.

With that being the case, if future salaries are continually set with reference to previous ones, past discrimination means you are continually lugging around a block of lead. It could cost an employee tens, and maybe hundreds, of thousands of pounds throughout their working life.

Dropping the question could play a meaningful role in addressing that and there is practical evidence for this.

In the US, 21 states or city governments have taken the step of banning salary history questions to some extent. Research indicates that this can play a role in narrowing the gender pay gap. You would imagine that the same would be true for the other pay gaps.

But it actually goes beyond that. That vexatious little query can damage anyone to whom it is posed. It means that those who enter the workforce in the middle of a recession, for example, can easily end up carrying the economic scarring with them throughout their careers, whether they’re black, while, male, female, able-bodied or disabled.

The Fawcett Society has launched a campaign – #EndSalaryHistory, timed to coincide with Equal Pay Day – which calls on employers to end the practice. File that under the heading “thoroughly good idea”.

Some employers have already done so. Others should follow their lead. If they won’t then Britain should take the example of those US states and cities and force the issue.