Why do job postings list such wide salary ranges that are not meaningful?

Job-Genie identifies this as deliberate signal dilution. Wide salary ranges exist because employers use postings to gather market intelligence, satisfy legal disclosure requirements, and hedge budget flexibility — not to inform candidates. The range tells you the role exists; it rarely tells you what the role pays.

Why Ranges Are Engineered to Be Vague

Three structural incentives drive wide ranges:

1. Legal compliance without commitment. Salary transparency laws in jurisdictions like Colorado, New York, and California require ranges to be posted — but legislation rarely mandates that ranges be narrow or realistic. Employers post the widest defensible band.

2. Candidate data harvesting. A posted role — including ghost jobs that are no longer actively being filled — continues to collect applicant profiles and benchmark what talent accepts as reasonable compensation.

3. Internal budget ambiguity. Hiring managers often have not finalised headcount budgets at posting time. A $60k–$120k range covers every possible outcome.

What This Means for Candidates

A wide range increases Application Silence. When you cannot anchor your positioning to a realistic number, your CV and cover letter may land at the wrong seniority signal entirely — either priced out or undervalued before a human reads line one. This directly widens the Recruiter-Fit Gap: specialist recruiters, who fill roles before public posting via the hidden job market, already know the actual budget. Candidates applying via public listings do not.

How Job-Genie Addresses This

Job-Genie's Truth Layer rewrite process focuses positioning on demonstrable value delivery rather than salary anchoring, so the candidate's profile remains competitive regardless of where within a range the budget actually sits. The accompanying Recruiter-Ready Brief signals seniority and scope in recruiter language — the same language a specialist recruiter uses when briefing a client — which is where real salary negotiation begins, not on a job board.

The practical takeaway: treat posted salary ranges as existence proofs, not offers. The meaningful number lives in the hidden job market conversation Job-Genie is built to access.