Are businesses and corporates truly hiring ? Has the digital economy become a massive convenience mystification of actual economic activities? How large, systemic and unstable is the assets bubble built by Wall Street financial engineering and gambling addiction? What are the empirical evidence of structural distortions in digital labor markets that represent a significant and growing divergence between advertised job openings and actual hiring intent? Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), Revelio Labs workforce intelligence platform, Greenhouse hiring software analytics, and multiple industry surveys conducted throughout 2024, we demonstrate that between eighteen and 40% of online job postings represent what have become known as “ghost jobs”—positions with no immediate hiring intention. The hire-to-posting ratio has experienced a dramatic collapse, declining from 0.75 in 2018 to below 0.40 in 2024, meaning only four out of every ten job postings now result in an actual hire. This phenomenon is not a market anomaly or temporary distortion but rather a predictable outcome of the digital economy’s incentive structures, where job boards profit from posting volume regardless of hiring outcomes, and employers face zero marginal cost for maintaining indefinite listings. This phenomenon takes the form of “activity inflation” endemic to digital platforms that optimise for engagement metrics rather than economic substance, drawing parallels to similar distortions observed across social media, streaming services, and other digital marketplaces.
Digitization of labor markets
The digitisation of labor markets promised unprecedented efficiency through perfect information, frictionless matching, and transparent price discovery. Yet job seekers increasingly report a paradox that suggests the system is fundamentally broken. Thousands of applications yield minimal responses, postings that remain open for months without being filled, and companies that appear to be perpetually hiring yet never seem to fill positions. This study investigates whether online job postings accurately reflect genuine labor demand or whether they represent an inflated metric divorced from actual hiring activity, and if so, what structural forces drive this distortion.
Digital job boards have created a systemic inflation of job postings due to four key structural factors. First, revenue model misalignment means that job boards profit from posting volume and traffic rather than successful placements, creating incentives to maximize listings regardless of their legitimacy. Second, zero marginal cost dynamics allow digital postings to remain active indefinitely at minimal expense, unlike the pre-digital era where daily newspaper classified ad fees created natural discipline. Third, signaling incentives mean companies use postings to project growth, maintain talent pipelines, or conduct market research rather than for actual hiring. Fourth, regulatory arbitrage exists because there are no legal requirements to verify hiring intent or remove filled positions in most jurisdictions, creating a lawless environment where deceptive practices face no meaningful penalties.
Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS Data (2018-2024)
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey serves as the primary government source for understanding labor market dynamics. According to the most recent data available at https://www.bls.gov/jlt/, the survey reported 7.7 million job openings as of October 2024. The JOLTS program defines a job opening as a specific position that is open on the last business day of the month, with work available that could start within thirty days, and for which the employer is actively recruiting from outside the organisation. The survey samples approximately 16,400 nonfarm establishments each month, representing a diverse cross-section of industries and company sizes across the United States. However, a critical limitation of JOLTS data is that it relies on self-reporting by employers without any verification mechanism for hiring intent. Companies report how many positions they consider “open,” but there is no requirement to demonstrate that these positions have approved budgets, active hiring managers, or any realistic prospect of being filled. This creates the possibility for significant measurement error if companies routinely report positions they have no intention of filling.
Revelio Labs Workforce Intelligence (2018-2024)
Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence company that analyzes millions of employment records, conducted comprehensive research on the hire-to-posting ratio over a five-year period. Their analysis, which was reported by CNBC in August 2024 (https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/22/ghost-jobs-why-fake-job-listings-are-on-the-rise.html), involved matching job postings to actual hires within a six-month window by comparing job titles, seniority levels, company identifiers, and geographic locations. This methodology allows for a direct measurement of what percentage of job postings result in actual employment, providing a more accurate picture than JOLTS self-reporting alone.
Greenhouse Platform Analytics (Q2 2024)
Greenhouse, a leading applicant tracking system and hiring software platform serving over 7,500 corporate clients, including Major League Baseball and HubSpot, conducted an internal analysis of its platform data for the second quarter of 2024. The results, published in their 2024 State of Job Hunting report (https://www.greenhouse.com/blog/greenhouse-2024 State-of-job-hunting-report), revealed that between 18% and 22% of job postings on their platform were classified as “ghost jobs”—positions that showed no active engagement from hiring teams. Perhaps more troubling, the analysis found that approximately seventy percent of their clients had posted at least one ghost job during the quarter, and fifteen percent of companies regularly posted ghost jobs as a matter of routine practice.
Resume Builder Survey (June 2024)
Resume Builder, a career services platform, commissioned a comprehensive survey of 649 hiring managers across U.S. companies in May 2024, with results published in June. The full report is available at https://www.resumebuilder.com/3-in-10-companies-currently-have-fake-job-posting-listed/. The survey revealed that 39% of hiring managers admitted their companies had posted fake job listings in the past year, and 30% currently had active ghost jobs posted at the time of the survey. The study also collected detailed data on the motivations behind these practices and their perceived impacts on business outcomes.
Clarify Capital Studies (2022 and 2025)
Clarify Capital, a business financing consultancy, has conducted multiple surveys on the ghost jobs phenomenon. Their January 2025 study (https://clarifycapital.com/ghost-jobs) surveyed 1,000 American employers and found that nearly one in three admitted to posting job listings with no intention of hiring. Their earlier 2022 survey provided valuable longitudinal comparison data, showing how the practice has evolved over time.
MyPerfectResume JOLTS Analysis (2025)
MyPerfectResume, an AI-powered resume-building platform, conducted a comprehensive analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS data published in November 2025. Their report (https://www.myperfectresume.com/career-center/careers/basics/ghost-job-economy) calculated the gap between reported job openings and actual hires on a monthly basis, providing industry-by-industry breakdowns of where phantom postings are most concentrated.
Key Metrics Defined
Ghost Job: An online job posting for a position that either does not exist in any meaningful sense, has no current hiring intention or approved budget, has already been filled but remains posted, or is being used for non-hiring purposes such as talent database building, market research, employer branding, or employee discipline. The key characteristic is that the employer has no genuine, immediate intent to hire someone for the advertised position.
Hire-to-Posting Ratio: The number of actual hires completed divided by the number of job postings advertised in a given time period. This metric provides a direct measurement of how many job postings translate into real employment outcomes. A declining ratio indicates that a growing percentage of postings are not resulting in hires.
Posting Duration: The elapsed time from initial posting to either removal from job boards or hire completion. Industry standards suggest that legitimate hiring processes typically complete within thirty to sixty days, with the Society for Human Resource Management reporting an average time-to-fill of forty-one days in 2024.
Empirical Findings, The Collapse of the Hire-to-Posting Ratio
The most striking empirical finding is the dramatic collapse in the ratio of hires per job posting over the past six years. According to Revelio Labs analysis reported by CNBC, in 2019 there were approximately eight hires for every ten job postings, representing a hire-to-posting ratio of 0.80. This meant that eighty percent of job postings resulted in an actual hire within a reasonable timeframe, suggesting a relatively healthy and efficient labor market matching process. However, this ratio has experienced a precipitous decline. By 2024, the ratio had fallen to approximately four hires for every ten job postings—a 0.40 ratio representing a fifty percent decline from the 2019 peak. This means that in the current environment, only four out of every ten job postings result in an actual hire, while the remaining six postings either represent positions that are never filled, positions that don’t actually exist, or positions that employers have no serious intention of filling. The year-over-year progression tells a story of steady deterioration. In 2020, during the pandemic disruption, the ratio declined to 0.65 as many companies posted positions speculatively while hiring remained frozen. The ratio continued falling to 0.55 in 2021, then to 0.50 in 2022, 0.45 in 2023, and finally to 0.40 in 2024. This represents a cumulative decline of forty-seven percent from the 2018 baseline of 0.75, indicating a fundamental structural shift in the relationship between posted vacancies and actual hiring outcomes rather than a temporary cyclical phenomenon.
Ghost Job Prevalence by Source
Multiple independent sources using different methodologies have converged on remarkably consistent estimates of ghost job prevalence, providing strong confidence in the overall scale of the phenomenon. Greenhouse’s internal platform analysis for Q2 2024 found that between eighteen and twenty-two percent of job postings showed no hiring team activity. The Resume Builder survey of 649 hiring managers found that thirty to thirty-nine percent of companies had posted or currently maintained ghost jobs. MyPerfectResume’s analysis of JOLTS data calculated that thirty percent of job openings in June 2025 never resulted in a hire. Clarify Capital’s 2025 survey found that nearly one in three employers admitted to posting with no hiring intent. Finally, Revelio Labs’ matching analysis suggests that as much as sixty percent of postings may not result in hires within six months, though this includes both deliberate ghost jobs and positions that remain genuinely unfilled due to normal recruiting challenges.
Taken together, these multiple data sources using independent methodologies support a weighted average estimate that twenty-five to 35% of online job postings are ghost jobs with no immediate hiring intent. The lower end of this range represents positions that show clear evidence of being deliberately fake, while the higher end includes positions that may have some theoretical hiring intent but lack the budget, management commitment, or organisational readiness to actually complete a hire.
Industry Variations
The prevalence of ghost jobs varies dramatically across different industries, revealing important patterns about which sectors are most prone to this practice. According to Greenhouse’s Q2 2024 analysis, the construction industry showed the highest ghost job rate at 38% of postings. This likely reflects the project-based nature of construction work, where companies may post positions speculatively anticipating future projects that may or may not materialise depending on whether contracts are won. The arts and entertainment industry ranked second at 34%, followed by legal services at 29% and corporate services at 31%. The technology sector, which has been particularly volatile in recent years with waves of hiring freezes and layoffs, shows ghost job rates as high as 40% according to various sources. Publishing and media also demonstrate elevated rates at thirty-five percent. These industries share common characteristics: they are knowledge-intensive sectors where building talent pipelines is considered strategically valuable, they have experienced significant economic volatility requiring flexible workforce planning, and they often have sophisticated HR departments with the resources to maintain extensive posting activities. In contrast, industries with more stable employment patterns and tighter regulatory oversight, such as healthcare and education, while still experiencing high turnover that generates many legitimate job postings, appear to have lower rates of deliberate ghost posting. However, these sectors still face challenges with positions that remain posted long after being filled due to administrative inefficiencies rather than deliberate deception.
Geographic Distribution
Analysis by ResumeUp.AI of LinkedIn job postings revealed significant geographic variation in ghost job concentration across major U.S. metropolitan areas. Los Angeles showed the highest rate at 30.5%, likely reflecting the entertainment industry’s speculative hiring practices and the presence of many startup companies with uncertain funding situations. New York followed closely at 28.9%, driven by high concentrations of finance, media, and corporate services sectors. Philadelphia ranked third at 27.8%, while the national average stood at 27.4%. Interestingly, some major tech hubs showed lower rates. Seattle registered 17.3% and Boston 18.7%, suggesting that cities with more mature tech ecosystems and stronger ties to research institutions may maintain better hiring practices. These regional variations suggest that ghost jobs are not uniformly distributed but rather concentrate in areas with particular industry mixes and labor market conditions.
Company Motivations for Posting Ghost Jobs
Perhaps the most revealing findings come from surveys that asked hiring managers directly why they post ghost jobs. The Resume Builder survey provided detailed insights into the strategic motivations behind this practice, 38% of hiring managers who admitted posting ghost jobs said they did so to maintain a continuous presence on job boards, ensuring their company remained visible to job seekers even when not actively hiring; 36% used ghost postings to test and refine job descriptions, essentially conducting A/B testing on copy and requirements to see what generated the most qualified applicant responses. Twenty-six per cent built talent pipelines by collecting resumes for potential future hiring needs. An equal twenty-six per cent used ghost jobs for market intelligence, gathering data on competitor activities, salary expectations, and the availability of candidates with specific skill sets. Twenty-five per cent posted ghost jobs to signal growth to current employees, reducing turnover anxiety by creating the impression that the company was expanding rather than stagnant or declining. Twenty-three per cent used ghost postings to appear as though they were not experiencing a hiring freeze, maintaining appearances for investors and stakeholders during difficult periods.
Most disturbingly, 35% explicitly stated they posted ghost jobs to make current employees feel more replaceable, using the threat of abundant external candidates as a form of workforce discipline to extract greater effort and compliance. An unknown but likely significant percentage posted jobs where internal candidates had already been predetermined for regulatory compliance purposes, going through the motions of external recruiting to satisfy legal requirements while having no genuine intent to consider outside applicants. These motivations reveal that the majority of reasons for posting ghost jobs—at least 36%—relate to signalling, branding, or research rather than actual hiring intent. This represents a fundamental misalignment between the ostensible purpose of job postings and their actual use in corporate strategy.
Impact on Business Outcomes
Remarkably, the Resume Builder survey found that companies perceived positive outcomes from posting ghost jobs across multiple dimensions. Sixty-eight per cent reported that the practice had a positive impact on revenue, though the mechanism for this benefit was not clearly specified. Sixty-five per cent claimed it increased employee morale, presumably because workers believed their burdens would soon be relieved by new hires, even though no such hiring would actually occur. Most striking, 37% reported boosted productivity when fake job postings were active, suggesting that the threat of replacement does indeed motivate workers to increase their output, at least in the short term before disillusionment sets in. These perceived benefits help explain why the practice has become so widespread despite its obvious ethical problems. From a narrow organisational perspective focused solely on short-term metrics, ghost jobs appear to offer tangible benefits at minimal cost. However, these reported benefits do not account for longer-term reputational damage, erosion of trust, or the negative externalities imposed on job seekers and the broader labor market.
Structural Analysis: The Digital Economy Incentive Problem
Modern job boards operate on business models that fundamentally reward posting volume rather than hiring success, creating a structural incentive misalignment that encourages the proliferation of ghost jobs. Understanding these revenue models is essential to grasping why the platform itself has no economic interest in preventing fake postings. Job boards generate revenue through multiple channels, none of which depend on whether advertised positions result in actual hires. The primary revenue stream is pay-per-posting fees, where employers pay between $200 and $500 per posting for thirty to sixty days of visibility. Featured or sponsored listings that appear at the top of search results command premium prices ranging from $500 to over $2,000 per posting. Many platforms also offer subscription models where companies pay monthly fees between $100 and $1,000 or more for unlimited posting privileges, explicitly incentivising maximum posting volume regardless of quality or legitimacy. Additional revenue comes from resume database access, where employers pay annual fees ranging from $1,000 to over $10,000 to search candidate pools that have been built through job postings. Pay-per-click advertising generates income when candidates are redirected to external application systems. Display advertising on job boards generates revenue based on traffic volume, again incentivising maximum activity regardless of whether it represents genuine hiring opportunities. Finally, premium services such as applicant tracking system integration, analytics dashboards, and employer branding packages provide high-margin revenue streams.
According to Staffing Industry Analysts, the global online job advertising market reached $34.4 billion in 2023, with market leaders Microsoft (which owns LinkedIn) and Recruit Holdings (which owns Indeed) commanding approximately 47% market share. Notably, the market experienced its first decline in 2023, falling 5% from the previous year, potentially due to growing awareness of platform quality issues, including ghost jobs.
The incentive structure is clear. Job boards profit from more postings regardless of their legitimacy, longer posting duration, which generates more impressions and click-through revenue, higher overall traffic, which supports advertising rates, and more applications, which can be monetised through resume database access. What job boards explicitly do not profit from is successful hires, posting accuracy, fast time-to-fill, or candidate satisfaction. This creates a fundamental misalignment where the platform’s economic interests diverge from the interests of job seekers and from the broader social interest in efficient labor market matching.
Zero Marginal Cost Economics
The economics of job posting underwent a fundamental transformation with the transition from physical to digital media, and this transformation explains much of why ghost jobs have proliferated. In the pre-digital era dominated by newspaper classified advertisements, posting a job typically cost between $5 and $50 per day. This daily cost structure created powerful economic incentives for hiring discipline. Companies would remove filled positions immediately to stop paying daily fees, and they would think carefully before posting positions they weren’t seriously committed to filling because the costs accumulated rapidly over time. In the digital era, the cost structure changed dramatically. Posting a job now costs between $0 and $500 for a thirty to 90-day period, or even zero marginal cost if the company has purchased an unlimited posting subscription. After the initial posting, the marginal cost of keeping a posting active indefinitely approaches zero. There are no daily fees, no printing costs, no circulation charges. The economic constraint that once enforced honest signalling has been eliminated.
This zero marginal cost environment fundamentally changes rational employer behaviour. Without cost constraints, rational actors will maximise optionality by over-posting, keeping positions advertised indefinitely in case an exceptional candidate appears, using postings for purposes other than immediate hiring, and maintaining postings even after positions are filled because there is no economic penalty for doing so. Ghost jobs become not just economically feasible but economically optimal from the perspective of a company seeking to maximise flexibility and minimize risk.
The Traffic-Optimization Trap
Job boards, like most digital platforms, optimise their user experience for engagement metrics thatmaximisee advertising revenue and platform stickiness. These algorithmic optimization strategies systematically inflate apparent activity beyond the underlying economic reality. Recommendation algorithms suggest ever-more jobs to users to maximize clicks and session duration, which increases advertising impressions and pay-per-click revenue. Many platforms automatically repost expired listings or suggest that employers refresh their postings, creating fresh content that sustains traffic even if the underlying positions haven’t changed. “Similar jobs” recommendations extend user sessions by directing people to related postings, increasing daily active user counts that are reported to investors. Notification overload brings users back to the platform repeatedly, driving engagement metrics that justify higher advertising rates. This creates a dynamic strikingly similar to other digital platform distortions. Instagram “likes” don’t necessarily represent genuine endorsement value but rather engagement metrics that the platform has been optimised to maximise. Twitter “impressions” don’t equate to meaningful readership but rather to counting of possible exposures regardless of attention. Similarly, job board “postings” don’t equate to actual hiring intent but rather to inventory that generates traffic and monetisation opportunities. All are activity metrics masquerading as value metrics.
Modelling the Ghost Jobs Phenomenon and The Job Posting Inflation Model
We can formally model the relationship between postings and hires to quantify the growth of ghost jobs over time. Let P represent total job postings, H represent actual hires, and G represent ghost jobs, defined as postings with no hire intent. The relationship can be expressed as P equals H plus G, and the hire-to-posting ratio R equals H divided by P, which can also be written as H divided by the quantity H plus G.
Using historical data, we can solve for the ghost job rate. In 2018, the hire-to-posting ratio was 0.75, which means that G equals approximately 0.33 times H, representing a 33% ghost rate where roughly one in three postings was a ghost job. By 2024, the ratio had fallen to 0.40, implying that G now equals 1.50 times H, meaning ghost postings are now 150% of actual hires—there are more phantom postings than real hiring opportunities.
If we assume that actual hiring demand has grown slowly and steadily based on employment statistics showing approximately 8% cumulative employment growth from 2018 to 2024, but job postings have grown much faster, then the growth rate of ghost jobs equals the posting growth rate minus the hiring growth rate. This suggests that ghost jobs have experienced sixty to 100% growth over the six-year period, far outpacing legitimate job growth.
The Beveridge Curve Distortion
The Beveridge Curve, a foundational concept in labor economics, plots job vacancies against unemployment rates to characterize labor market tightness. Policymakers, particularly at the Federal Reserve, use this relationship to guide monetary policy decisions. A rightward shift in the curve—more vacancies for a given unemployment rate—suggests a tight labor market that may require interest rate increases to cool inflation. However, if twenty-five to 35% of reported vacancies are ghost jobs, the Beveridge Curve is being systematically distorted. The labor market appears tighter than it actually is, potentially leading to overly restrictive monetary policy. As Dan Kaplan of Korn Ferry noted in the CNBC report, “The rise of ghost jobs is muddying the jobs report. It’s making it harder for the Fed to make decisions and understand what the labor market looks like.” This represents a serious problem where labor market data contamination affects macroeconomic policy decisions with consequences for millions of workers and businesses.
Expected Value Calculation for Employers
We can model why companies rationally choose to post ghost jobs by examining the expected value from their perspective. The direct cost of a ghost posting ranges from $0 to $500, often approaching zero with subscription models or automated job feed aggregation. The opportunity cost is minimal because posting systems are largely automated. The risk of penalties or reputational damage is low because there are few legal requirements and enforcement mechanisms. Against these minimal costs, the benefits can be substantial. Building a talent pipeline provides access to thousands of resumes with uncertain but potentially high value if hiring needs suddenly emerge. Market intelligence gathered through applications is worth $1,000 to $10,000 in equivalent salary survey and competitive intelligence value. Employer branding and visibility on job boards provides advertising value equivalent to $5,000 to $50,000 in conventional marketing spend. Employee discipline stemming from replacement anxiety can generate productivity gains, though these may be offset by morale and retention costs over time. Investor signalling can support stock prices and valuation multiples. For most companies, especially larger organisations with sophisticated HR departments, the expected value of posting ghost jobs is clearly positive. This explains why the practice has become so widespread despite its ethical problems and negative impacts on job seekers. Until the cost structure changes through either regulatory penalties or reputational damage that affects business outcomes, economically rational companies will continue the practice.
Impact on Job Seekers and Labor Market Efficiency, Quantifying Wasted Effort
The individual and aggregate costs imposed on job seekers by ghost jobs are enormous, though difficult to measure precisely. Anecdotal evidence and survey data suggest that typical job seekers now submit fifty to two hundred applications before receiving offers, with some highly competitive fields requiring even more. With a ghost job rate of 27.4% based on conservative estimates, this means the average job seeker wastes between fourteen and fifty-five applications on positions that will never result in hiring. The time investment per application ranges from thirty minutes for basic online forms to over an hour for applications requiring customised cover letters, portfolio submissions, or answering a detailed questionnaire. This translates to seven to fifty-five hours of wasted effort per person. Multiplied across millions of active job seekers at any given time, this represents billions of person-hours annually that are being extracted from job seekers and converted into worthless labour that benefits no one. The opportunity cost extends beyond time to include psychological costs, financial stress from prolonged unemployment, and suboptimal career decisions made in desperation after months of fruitless applications. These costs are systematically externalised by employers and platforms onto job seekers who have no ability to distinguish real opportunities from fake ones.
Psychological and Economic Costs
The psychological impact of ghost jobs on job seekers extends far beyond simple frustration. Extended job searches, characterised by hundreds of unanswered applications, create learned helplessness, where individuals begin to believe their efforts have no correlation with outcomes. Application fatigue sets in as people lose motivation to carefully tailor materials, leading to a vicious cycle of declining application quality. Trust in the hiring process erodes as people realise that stated qualifications, application procedures, and timeline promises are often meaningless. Survey data from Greenhouse found that 79% of job seekers report heightened anxiety in the current market, with 61% experiencing “ghosting” where employers simply stop communicating after interviews. The combination of ghost jobs and employer ghosting creates what Jon Stross, president of Greenhouse, called “more soul-crushing than ever” and “kind of a horror show.” These psychological costs translate into delayed career transitions, acceptance of suboptimal positions out of desperation, longer unemployment durations with accompanying financial stress, and decreased labor market participation as discouraged workers exit the search process entirely. The broader economic impact includes human capital misallocation, reduced productivity from poor job matches, wage stagnation as workers lose negotiating power in an apparently glutted market, and increased economic inequality as only candidates with substantial financial resources can sustain extended searches.
Market Distortion Effects
Ghost jobs create several forms of market distortion that reduce overall labor market efficiency. Severe information asymmetry exists because job seekers cannot distinguish real from fake opportunities without wasting time applying. Search cost inflation occurs as more applications become necessary to achieve the same outcome. Geographic inefficiency develops as people make relocation decisions based on phantom demand that doesn’t actually exist. Skill mismatch increases as people waste time pursuing phantom opportunities instead of realistic ones. Wage suppression occurs as artificial oversupply appearances weaken worker negotiating power, with employers able to claim abundant alternative candidates even when actual hiring options are limited.
Comparative Analysis: Other Digital Economy Bubbles
The ghost jobs phenomenon follows a clear pattern observed across multiple sectors of the digital economy, where activity metrics become inflated beyond underlying value. In social media, follower counts and engagement metrics are inflated by bots and fake accounts representing ten to 50% of apparent activity. In streaming media, view counts are reported without a clear distinction between human attention and automated playback. In mobile applications, download numbers grossly overstate active usage, with retention rates of 20% to 30% being typical. In advertising technology, impression counts include non-human traffic and fraud, with only 50% to 70% representing real human views. In cryptocurrency, transaction volume has been estimated to include as much as 80% wash trading and fake activity. The common features across these sectors are revealing. Platforms optimise for and prominently display volume, engagement, and activity metrics while quality, conversion, and real economic value remain obscured or unmeasured. Revenue models reward apparent activity regardless of whether it represents genuine value creation. The costs of inflated metrics are externalised to downstream users, participants, or advertisers rather than borne by platforms. Verification and quality control systems are weak or non-existent because platforms lack economic incentives to implement them.
The “Activity Illusion”
Digital platforms systematically create what we might call the “activity illusion”—the confusion of measurable activity with underlying value. One million job postings do not equal one million jobs actually available. One million Instagram followers do not equal one million genuinely interested people. One billion ad impressions do not equal one billion potential customers. Yet digital economy valuations, marketing claims, and user decisions often treat these metrics as if they were equivalent. This illusion persists because activity is easy to measure and dramatic to report, while actual value creation is difficult to measure and often modest in comparison. Platforms have every incentive to promote the illusion because it supports higher advertising rates, user engagement, and company valuations. Users have limited ability to see through the illusion because platforms control information about the actual conversion of activity into value.
Legal and Regulatory Landscape
At the federal level in the United States, there is currently no law that explicitly prohibits posting ghost jobs, requires employers to verify hiring intent, mandates removal of filled positions within specific timeframes, or empowers the Federal Trade Commission to pursue enforcement actions against deceptive job posting practices. This creates a largely unregulated environment where practices that might constitute false advertising in other contexts face no legal consequences in the employment context. However, legislative action is beginning to emerge at the state level. California enacted legislation in March 2025 requiring employers to disclose whether a job posting is for an existing vacancy or an anticipated future vacancy, with violations constituting unfair competition under state law and enforcement authority granted to the California labor commissioner. New Jersey introduced identical bills in both the General Assembly and Senate in June 2024, also requiring clear disclosure about job posting status and the timely removal of filled positions. Kentucky introduced legislation in January 2025 that would have banned ghost jobs entirely, though the bill ultimately failed to pass the legislature. At the international level, the Canadian province of Ontario has adopted more aggressive requirements. Legislation scheduled to take effect in January 2026 will require companies to inform job applicants about their candidacy status in a timely fashion, effectively mandating communication that currently results in “ghosting” of applicants. Various European Union member states have posting transparency requirements, though specific provisions vary by country.
Consumer Protections and Regulation
Arguments in favour of regulation emphasise consumer protection principles, noting that job seekers are effectively consumers of employment information and deserve protection from false advertising. Misrepresentation of opportunity clearly meets the definition of deceptive trade practices in other commercial contexts. Honest employers are disadvantaged when competitors can appear more attractive by maintaining phantom postings. Public interest in accurate labor market data for economic policymaking provides another justification. Externalised costs imposed on job seekers who waste time and resources on fake opportunities create market failure that justifies regulatory intervention. Arguments against regulation emphasise free speech concerns, with employers claiming that job postings constitute protected commercial speech. Legitimate business necessity arguments suggest that companies need flexibility to build talent pipelines and respond to uncertain future needs. Enforcement difficulty questions note that determining employer intent is inherently subjective and administratively challenging. Some argue for market self-correction, claiming job seekers will learn to avoid chronic offenders and platforms will implement verification to maintain credibility, though evidence for these mechanisms is weak given the persistence and growth of the problem.
Industry Response and Mitigation Efforts
Some platforms have begun implementing transparency measures in response to growing criticism. LinkedIn introduced a “Verified Jobs” program where over 50% of listings now carry verification badges indicating that the company has confirmed active hiring intent. Greenhouse has developed internal transparency metrics and is working on features that reward employers for prioritising candidate experience and communication. Third-party verification networks are forming, with initiatives like “Truth in Job Ads” creating ethical recruiting standards and certification programs. However, these initiatives remain voluntary and incomplete. Many job boards have no verification programs at all, and even verified listings can become ghost jobs if companies stop actively hiring but don’t inform the platform. The fundamental economic incentives that reward posting volume over quality remain unchanged.
Job Seeker Strategies
Job seekers can take several protective measures, though none are foolproof. Red flags to watch for include postings that have been active for more than thirty days, since legitimate positions typically fill within the SHRM-reported average of forty-one days. Generic job descriptions that lack specific responsibilities or qualifications often indicate speculative postings. Companies with many similar postings may be building databases rather than actively hiring. Postings that appear cyclically, being removed and reposted every thirty to sixty days, are likely evergreen recruiting rather than specific opportunities. Companies that present themselves as “always hiring” are often maintaining phantom inventory rather than experiencing genuine growth. Recommended protective actions include prioritizing verified postings on platforms that offer verification, researching companies on Glassdoor and similar sites for reviews mentioning ghost jobs, checking LinkedIn for actual hiring manager and team activity rather than relying solely on job board listings, attempting direct outreach to companies rather than relying exclusively on mass applications, and tracking personal application-to-response ratios by platform to identify which sources provide better quality leads. Setting personal limits on application volume can protect mental health even at the cost of fewer total applications.