Are you eligible for the higher end of the salary range? Probably not, new data suggests

As more companies have begun posting job listings by salary range—in part due to state laws mandating a certain amount of salary transparency—many job seekers are now armed with more information when entering salary negotiations.

But salary information in job listings can be misleading, especially when employers offer broad salary ranges of more than $50,000 (or even up to $100,000), as potential hires may think they fall into the upper half of the salary band.

A new report from Glassdoor finds that while job seekers often see themselves as in the middle or top of the salary bracket, the reality is quite different. Most of the time, the salary they end up receiving is below the grade.

Glassdoor found that when it compared data from hundreds of thousands of job listings and salaries from full-time employees, more than 60% of salaries for a given job were below the average salary range offered on similar job listings. (The median salary from Glassdoor data reached at least $15,000, with a starting point of $61,000.)

Glassdoor also found that while salary ranges were often accurate—that is, new hires received salaries that were actually within the job range—there were cases where they were not. For 22% of job listings, the reported compensation of people holding those jobs fell below the proposed salary range. While large employers tend to have fewer discrepancies between job listing pay categories and actual wages, there was a slight difference when Glassdoor compared states with strict pay transparency laws (namely California, Colorado, Hawaii, New York, and Washington State) versus states that did not have such laws.

As Fast company As previously reported, companies may be at risk of losing job candidates if they always offer salaries in the lower salary range, or if their salary ranges are so wide that they seem impossible for people to interpret. Overly broad salary categories may also invite scrutiny and potential fines from agencies charged with enforcing pay disclosure laws. Still, as more states pass transparency laws aimed at empowering job seekers and making salary negotiations more equitable, it’s clear that employers should take salary information in job listings with a grain of salt.