Hourly against salaried, ranges against single figures, what “up to” and “starting at” actually promise, and why a posting can honestly say nothing at all.
Most of the postings on this board print a pay figure, and most of the rest are honest about not doing so. But the figures come in several shapes, and two postings that look alike on a card can be promising very different things. This is how to read them.
Hourly or salaried
A figure under about $200 is an hourly rate; a figure in the thousands is a yearly salary. The cards say which, and the employer pages keep the two apart when they summarise what an employer pays. The conversion people reach for — hourly times 2,080 — assumes forty hours a week for fifty-two weeks, which is a full-time job with paid time off. It does not hold for a part-time posting, a PRN shift or a seasonal role, and a “$25 an hour” posting that offers twenty hours a week is a $26,000 job, not a $52,000 one. Read the job type next to the rate before you multiply.
A range is a range, not a promise of the top
Large employers print a band — “$31.85 – $52.76 an hour” — because that is the band their pay system holds for the grade, from a new hire to someone with twenty years in the role. A new entrant is usually offered in the lower third. The band tells you two useful things: where the floor is, and how far the role can grow without changing title. It does not tell you what you will be offered. Treat the low end as the offer and the high end as the ceiling, and you will rarely be disappointed.
The board’s “typical” figure on employer, region and city pages is the midpoint of the median posting’s range — a way of saying what the middle of an employer’s postings looks like without pretending to know what any one offer will be.
“Starting at”, “up to” and single figures
A single figure is usually the starting rate, and employers who print one — the car-rental companies, the laboratory chains — mean it as a floor: the posting says $17.50 and the offer is $17.50. A floor written as “$21.07+” or “starts at $39.00” is read the same way.
“Up to $X” is the opposite kind of statement: a ceiling that depends on location, experience or a bonus, and rarely the number a new hire sees. This board does not treat a ceiling as pay, so a posting that only says “earn up to $17.50 in select locations” shows as “Pay not listed” here even though a number appears on the employer’s page. That is deliberate. A card that quoted the ceiling would contradict the posting it links to.
Weekly and monthly figures
A few employers, universities among them, print a weekly or monthly figure. The board leaves those off the card rather than risk printing a weekly figure as if it were a yearly one; the posting itself still carries it, so read the description.
Ranges that belong to another state
Several national employers print pay ranges on every posting because California, Colorado, New York or Washington require it — and then caption the range “applies to employees in Maryland” or “for Colorado applicants”. Florida requires no such disclosure, so on a Florida posting that caption means the number is about somewhere else. The board does not show those ranges. If you see one on the employer’s page, check the caption before you count on it.
Why a posting can honestly say nothing
Florida has no pay-transparency law. An employer here is not required to print a range, and many of the largest — including some that publish nationally — leave Florida postings silent. “Pay not listed” on a card means exactly that: the employer did not print a figure. It does not mean the pay is low, and it is not the board estimating anything. The employer pages show how many of each employer’s postings publish a figure, which is a fair sign of what to expect from the rest.
What the figure does not include
Shift differentials, sign-on bonuses, overtime and tips sit outside the printed rate. Hospital postings often describe a night or weekend differential in the text; a sign-on bonus is usually a separate line with its own conditions. Overtime in Florida follows the federal rule — time and a half after forty hours in a week, with no daily threshold — and applies to hourly roles, not to most salaried ones. Florida has no state income tax, which is worth remembering when you compare a figure here to one elsewhere.
Related: Florida’s minimum wage, and what PRN and per diem mean.