How to assess ghost-job claims while job hunting

Scripps News offers an interactive quiz designed to see whether people can spot red flags before applying.[1] The reported figures in the evidence point to a concern among job seekers, but they measure different things: iHire says 38.7% of job seekers encountered a posting they believed was fake, fraudulent or a scam while searching online.[2] A Wall Street Journal meta description, meanwhile, says a new analysis found one in five advertised jobs is fake or not filled.[4] Read those as separate claims, not as interchangeable estimates of ghost jobs.

The Congressional Research Service defines ghost postings as jobs for positions that do not exist or that employers do not plan to fill immediately.[3] Its report says applicants have been concerned about potential ghost jobs since at least 2003, while public discussion has increased in recent years.[3] Some employers post to assess a potential candidate pool for future openings or gather resumes for later hiring; others may use postings to demonstrate recruitment of a diverse applicant pool despite intending to hire internally.[3] The report also says some employers seek candidates with extraordinary potential through these listings.[3]

Some employers interview applicants despite having no intention of hiring anyone, according to the report.[3] Other ghost postings are unintentional, including when hiring plans change, or arise when third parties such as job boards automatically copy listings from other websites.[3] Staffing agencies may also invent openings to show employers that they can recruit talented people, while scammers may advertise jobs at fake companies or impersonate real employers.[3] The report says applying for nonexistent jobs can waste applicants’ time and sap their confidence.[3]

The Congressional Research Service says there are no official statistics measuring the scale of ghost jobs.[3] Its report describes JOLTS criteria that include whether a job could start within 30 days and whether the employer is actively recruiting outside workers.[3] It says JOLTS openings are unlikely to be ghost jobs if employers answer the questionnaire honestly.[3] JOLTS openings reached record levels in 2022 and later declined to levels seen in 2018 and 2019, but that trend does not itself provide an official count of ghost postings.[3]