Greenhouse: 19% of Q2 digital listings had no real intent to hire
State lawmakers in New York and Pennsylvania have proposed legislation aimed at the employers and platforms that post “ghost job” listings — postings for openings the companies have no immediate intention of filling — as frustration over the practice spills into statehouses and a state attorney general’s office.
The New York bill, approved by both houses of the legislature, calls for employers to disclose when they expect an advertised role to be filled and levies fines for violations. A spokeswoman for Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will review the legislation when it reaches her desk. In Pennsylvania, the bill from state Rep. Jim Prokopiak moved to the House Labor and Industry Committee in the spring.
“When people are putting the time and effort into applying, there’s a reasonable expectation that there is a job out there,” Prokopiak said. His bill would require employers to list accurate hiring intentions and establish timelines for removing posts.
Some companies post ads without a real opening to build a pipeline for jobs that might someday materialize or to be ready if a “dream candidate” appears. Job seekers on social media and forums have theorized about other motives — persuading investors and staff that the company is healthy and growing, or harvesting applicant data.
The practice has grown as it has become faster, cheaper and easier for employers to post jobs online. About 19% of jobs advertised on digital job boards in the second quarter were ghost jobs, according to Greenhouse, a hiring platform that reviewed its clients’ job postings. The company counted any posting that received at least one application but led to no hiring activity — such as a job-test submission or a scheduled interview.
Heather Sanford, a 44-year-old marketing professional in the Austin, Texas, area, has been looking for work since her last contract role ended in May 2025. She has applied for more than 3,000 jobs, she said, while slowly draining the nearly $40,000 in savings she once had. She has cut down on meals and is moving in with her father in the coming weeks to stretch her dollars further.
Sanford said she checks LinkedIn and other job boards for openings and applies to anything in her field or anywhere she thinks her skills are transferable. In many cases, she does not receive a response and later notices the ad reposted.
“If you’ve posted a job and you have 500 applicants, are you telling me not one or two or three are qualified?” she said. “Are you looking for a unicorn? Or is it not a real job?”
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Senate candidate, last month opened an investigation into LinkedIn, saying the platform might be misleading paying customers by failing to disclose that some of its job postings do not represent genuine hiring opportunities. The office is seeking documents, data and internal communications from the company.
“Our policies require that jobs posted be authentic and accurately represented. For many jobs posted on LinkedIn, we also display the company’s response time and whether they’re currently reviewing candidates, which helps job seekers know if it is a current, active job opportunity,” the company said in a statement.
Ghost jobs generally do not show up in government labor statistics, which are based on surveys asking employers to include only jobs that could start within 30 days and for which they are actively recruiting outside candidates. In June, U.S. job openings slipped to 7.4 million, according to the Labor Department.
Even some of those openings do not get filled, said Andy Nelesen, head of market strategy for the Americas at talent management firm SHL, which works with employers on recruiting.
“There’s a lot of economic uncertainty, all of which has employers having to sometimes pause jobs, hold them, or rethink them,” Nelesen said. “Maybe a job that was approved all of a sudden isn’t approved, or I’m trying to figure out how to fill it internally rather than externally. All of that is making this unpleasant experience a little more pronounced.”