That statistic that 1 in 5 job listings might be a “ghost job” comes from a company developing application tracking systems (Greenhouse) and as far as I can tell they included every listing on their website that wasn’t eventually marked as hired in their system. So a company that wanted to hire multiple people under the same application, choosing to leave it open, would be classified as a ghost job.
Most tech companies I worked for would have had our common hiring listings like “Senior Software Engineer” flagged as ghost jobs under this system. I think they wanted to use this report to get their name out, and it’s working because journalists like the WSJ and even politicians are now parading their report around.
The Greenhouse website looks like exactly the kind of ATS you don’t want. The top feature I see on their website is “Voice AI” which will perform an AI voice interview with the candidate for you.
I don’t want anything to do with that company and I don’t trust their numbers either.
Good to be skeptical. Remember, though, that there is zero cost to displaying ads. That means they get bundled at places like indeed. If you’re HR and have 3 openings, but have 4 ads you can run for less than the price of 3… Personally, I might run an ad for some kind of triple threat that has no chance of finding someone.
Also, the cost of screening ad responses is near zero compared to 30 years ago.
So we have economics that encourages ghost job listings. Personally I’d like to see big taxes on job postings scaling for company size, maybe duration too. Would solve this particular problem.
They have been banning them! Ontario, Canada had legislation come into effect earlier this year that achieved the following (albeit for only for companies of 25 employees or more):
- Required disclosure on the usage of AI in resume screening
- Mandatory salary ranges that can only have a range of $50k (except over $200,000)
- Required to state if the vacancy is real or 'planned for later'
- Must respond to applicant within 45-days of the final interview updating them on the status of their application.
Enforcement is also made slightly easier by requiring companies to retain copies of their job postings and any additional documents that are part of the application for 3 years.
I run a mid-sized job board (https://miserablyunemployed.com/) and I deal with a substantial amount of reports from users about jobs that aren't accurate or don't exist. They get taken down immediately.
The worse offenders are the companies that are using fake jobs to drive traffic to their sites. There is a special place in hell for those people.
I wish that legal systems were better equipped to deal with bad actors that obey the letter of the law, but skirt ethical and moral boundaries. I think a lot of the worst things in the world would get fixed if we had some better way of dealing with them.
Well, the government actually requires a non-ghost job posting for PERM applicants. There may not be much enforcement of this, particularly employers going out of their way to try to get as few qualified applications as possible.
Because, given you aren't filing for PERM these days for someone that you have not already hired, someone off the street is going to be straight out worse than your current employee.
PERM ade sense in a theoretical world without H1s or F1s, where you are filing PERM for someone off the street. But that almost never happens outside of cases where yes, you coud put the ad in the front page NYT and you'd still hire the candidate. And thus eitehr way you slice it, looking at the resumes of your ghost ad is a waste of time either way.
And if one really wanted to go back to that kind of green card process, it has to be very fast anyway, instead of being as slow as it is. Otherwise it becomes useless regardless.
They shouldn't accept newspaper job ads anymore. It's a total scam when they use those because no one is applying for jobs from the wanted section of a local newspaper in 2026. They left too many obvious loopholes these companies take advantage of.
Even if all of the PERM postings to be considered "ghost", it is just 120K postings per year. And PERM postings are usually promptly removed, not just hanging there like typical ghost job postings.
Building a talent pool by disingenuously leaving a position open to farm resumes and have a warm pipeline of candidates should be 'regulated' at the least. I'm trying to write politely today.
How would you acquire evidence that it is a ghost job, and they didn't just decide to hire someone else? How would you even know if there is a case worth pursuing?
Because the definition of a “ghost job” starts falling apart when you look closely at the numbers. A company that hires multiple people under a single generic listing like “Senior Software Engineer” would be classified as a ghost job, despite actually producing more hires than job listings. It would be annoying as hell if there was a law dictating that we had to post 50 separate job listings every time we wanted to hire 50 people and then carefully assign candidates to the right one so we didn’t accidentally trigger some ghost job law.
You could just state "we are hiring 50 people for this position" if you really are hiring 50 of the exact same role. Is there any value for posting 50 different identical job listings?
Just speculating here but perhaps those ghost job listings are used to artificially boost the appearance of growth or even just things being business as usual.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be to mislead investors, could be to mislead applicants, competitors, whatever.
I know if my business was shittin’ the bed I wouldn’t want to give any appearance of that. Better to just let everyone think it’s business as usual, no matter what.
That statistic that 1 in 5 job listings might be a “ghost job” comes from a company developing application tracking systems (Greenhouse) and as far as I can tell they included every listing on their website that wasn’t eventually marked as hired in their system. So a company that wanted to hire multiple people under the same application, choosing to leave it open, would be classified as a ghost job.
Most tech companies I worked for would have had our common hiring listings like “Senior Software Engineer” flagged as ghost jobs under this system. I think they wanted to use this report to get their name out, and it’s working because journalists like the WSJ and even politicians are now parading their report around.
The Greenhouse website looks like exactly the kind of ATS you don’t want. The top feature I see on their website is “Voice AI” which will perform an AI voice interview with the candidate for you.
I don’t want anything to do with that company and I don’t trust their numbers either.
Good to be skeptical. Remember, though, that there is zero cost to displaying ads. That means they get bundled at places like indeed. If you’re HR and have 3 openings, but have 4 ads you can run for less than the price of 3… Personally, I might run an ad for some kind of triple threat that has no chance of finding someone.
Also, the cost of screening ad responses is near zero compared to 30 years ago.
So we have economics that encourages ghost job listings. Personally I’d like to see big taxes on job postings scaling for company size, maybe duration too. Would solve this particular problem.
They have been banning them! Ontario, Canada had legislation come into effect earlier this year that achieved the following (albeit for only for companies of 25 employees or more):
- Required disclosure on the usage of AI in resume screening
- Mandatory salary ranges that can only have a range of $50k (except over $200,000)
- Required to state if the vacancy is real or 'planned for later'
- Must respond to applicant within 45-days of the final interview updating them on the status of their application.
Enforcement is also made slightly easier by requiring companies to retain copies of their job postings and any additional documents that are part of the application for 3 years.
The state of NY is close to passing legislation as well.
‘Ghost jobs’ could soon be illegal in New York - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558338 - June 2026 (139 comments)
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8877
https://www.hrdive.com/news/new-york-passed-bill-aimed-at-ha...
Related:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12977
I run a mid-sized job board (https://miserablyunemployed.com/) and I deal with a substantial amount of reports from users about jobs that aren't accurate or don't exist. They get taken down immediately.
The worse offenders are the companies that are using fake jobs to drive traffic to their sites. There is a special place in hell for those people.
I wish that legal systems were better equipped to deal with bad actors that obey the letter of the law, but skirt ethical and moral boundaries. I think a lot of the worst things in the world would get fixed if we had some better way of dealing with them.
How do you deal with false reports about bona fide jobs, but from malicious actors, such as competitors or trolls?
Yet, the government requires these, e.g. in the case of PERM applicants. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employer-recruitment...
Well, the government actually requires a non-ghost job posting for PERM applicants. There may not be much enforcement of this, particularly employers going out of their way to try to get as few qualified applications as possible.
Because, given you aren't filing for PERM these days for someone that you have not already hired, someone off the street is going to be straight out worse than your current employee.
PERM ade sense in a theoretical world without H1s or F1s, where you are filing PERM for someone off the street. But that almost never happens outside of cases where yes, you coud put the ad in the front page NYT and you'd still hire the candidate. And thus eitehr way you slice it, looking at the resumes of your ghost ad is a waste of time either way.
And if one really wanted to go back to that kind of green card process, it has to be very fast anyway, instead of being as slow as it is. Otherwise it becomes useless regardless.
They shouldn't accept newspaper job ads anymore. It's a total scam when they use those because no one is applying for jobs from the wanted section of a local newspaper in 2026. They left too many obvious loopholes these companies take advantage of.
Even if all of the PERM postings to be considered "ghost", it is just 120K postings per year. And PERM postings are usually promptly removed, not just hanging there like typical ghost job postings.
Been years since "Ghost job" was to be regulated. Nothing's been done for years.
This is yet another "they wanna ban" but won't do type of article.
Sick of this.
Building a talent pool by disingenuously leaving a position open to farm resumes and have a warm pipeline of candidates should be 'regulated' at the least. I'm trying to write politely today.
Great idea, virtually impossible to enforce I’d imagine.
Quite easy to enforce with a private right of action.
How would you acquire evidence that it is a ghost job, and they didn't just decide to hire someone else? How would you even know if there is a case worth pursuing?
Employees who are fed up with their employers bullshit could whistleblow pretty safely
I'm sure some ambulance chasing lawyer types will make quick work of the problem
Instead of wanting to, why not just do it? This is a bipartisan win.
Because the definition of a “ghost job” starts falling apart when you look closely at the numbers. A company that hires multiple people under a single generic listing like “Senior Software Engineer” would be classified as a ghost job, despite actually producing more hires than job listings. It would be annoying as hell if there was a law dictating that we had to post 50 separate job listings every time we wanted to hire 50 people and then carefully assign candidates to the right one so we didn’t accidentally trigger some ghost job law.
You could just state "we are hiring 50 people for this position" if you really are hiring 50 of the exact same role. Is there any value for posting 50 different identical job listings?
Seems like a difficult thing to enforce. Presumably not impossible to make some progress tho.
Just speculating here but perhaps those ghost job listings are used to artificially boost the appearance of growth or even just things being business as usual.
Might be useful to some folks.
That would be securities fraud.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be to mislead investors, could be to mislead applicants, competitors, whatever.
I know if my business was shittin’ the bed I wouldn’t want to give any appearance of that. Better to just let everyone think it’s business as usual, no matter what.
Isn't everything?