The pay transparency stat
Galileo Search analysis of advertised Australian AI roles, July 2026. Across the whole Australian job market, roughly a third of ads carry pay information (SEEK marketplace data). In AI, the disclosure rate collapses, and it is worst exactly where the stakes are highest: leadership and governance.
The numbers behind the claim
Of the 896 ads classified into AI role families in Galileo Search live tracking of advertised Australian AI roles as of 23 July 2026, 14% disclosed pay. A July 2026 deep taxonomy of 496 Australian AI ads found the same shape: 8.7% disclosure across leadership, governance and product ads, and 15 to 19% across technical ads.
The whole-market comparison: SEEK has publicly reported that about two-thirds of Australian job ads do not include a salary range, meaning roughly a third do. Australian AI hiring runs at less than half that disclosure rate, and AI leadership at roughly a quarter of it. That makes the AI talent market the most salary-opaque corner of Australian hiring, in the market where employers say they have the least idea what to pay.
Why it matters
Nine times out of ten you are asked to price yourself blind, in the market where your skills move fastest. Without published benchmarks you negotiate against a number you cannot see, and the cost lands hardest on people changing specialty into AI roles, where last year's salary is the wrong anchor.
Hiding pay does not hide it from the market, only from your own ad. Candidates benchmark anyway; opaque ads self-select for guesswork, drag out negotiation, and lose the scarce senior people who will not apply blind. In a leadership pool this thin, a published, evidence-based band is a sourcing advantage.
Citing this stat
“Roughly 9 in 10 Australian AI job ads do not disclose salary (Galileo Search analysis of advertised Australian AI roles, July 2026).”
Please link this page as the source. The quarterly context lives in the AU AI Talent Index, the full bands are in the AI Salary Guide, and every seat, city, company size and seniority is free to check on the live salary tool. Journalists can request underlying cuts at info@galileosearch.com.au.
Galileo Search publishes its salary data because evidence beats opacity: the roles we run publish the pay.