Ghost jobs are postings for roles that do not exist, or that the employer has no plan to fill any time soon. They are real enough to cost you an evening of tailoring a resume, and quiet enough that you never find out. The honest answer on how many there are is that no one has measured it well: the Congressional Research Service says there are no official statistics, and the most quoted estimate comes from a vendor that has not published its method. What you can do is check a handful of signals before you apply, and spend your time on the postings most likely to be real. This guide covers both, plus where the law is heading.
What a ghost job is
The clearest definition comes from a Congressional Research Service brief from April 2025: ghost job postings are "online job postings for positions that do not exist, or that employers are not planning to fill immediately."
That definition covers more than bad faith. CRS splits the causes into two groups. Some postings are deliberate. Others happen because circumstances change, or because a third party copies a listing and nobody takes it down.
It also helps to separate three things that get called "ghost" in a job search:
| Term | What it means | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Ghost job | A posting for a role that is not open, or not open soon | The time spent applying |
| Being ghosted | An employer stops replying, often after an interview | Time, and the uncertainty of waiting |
| Job scam | A fake offer, often impersonating a real company | Money or personal data |
Being ghosted is common on its own. In Greenhouse's 2024 survey of more than 2,500 workers, 61% of job seekers said they had been ghosted after a job interview. CRS makes a useful point here: an applicant is left in the same position whether the employer ghosted one candidate or posted a role it never meant to fill. From the outside, silence looks the same. That is why the checks below are about the posting, not about the silence.
How common they are
Every number you will see on this comes with a caveat, and most of the caveats are large.
| Claim | Source | What to know about it |
|---|---|---|
| "On Greenhouse alone, 18 to 22% of jobs listed are fake" | Fortune, January 2025 | A Greenhouse platform figure. The article does not explain how it was measured. |
| "Almost 70% of companies using the platform posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024" | The Wall Street Journal, citing Greenhouse data, as reported by Fortune | Counts companies with at least one, not the share of postings. |
| "Three in five candidates believe they've encountered a false job listing" | Greenhouse 2024 State of Job Hunting survey, via Fortune | Measures belief. Candidates cannot see whether a role was real. |
| 40% of hiring managers said their company had advertised a ghost job in the past year | A 2024 Resume Builder survey of 1,641 managers, cited in the Columbia Law Review | A vendor survey, self-reported by managers. |
CRS is blunt about this kind of evidence. It notes that the firms behind these studies "market hiring-related services, including job posting verification tools," and have released "varying levels of information regarding the methodologies," which makes the estimates hard to judge. Some analyses, CRS adds, are skeptical that ghost jobs are as common as reported.
So treat "one in five" as a vendor's estimate for one platform, not a fact about the job market. The reasonable reading is that ghost postings are common enough to plan around and uncertain enough that you should not assume any single posting is fake.
One thing worth knowing: the government's own job openings count is designed to exclude them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS survey only counts an opening if a specific position exists, the job could start within 30 days, and the employer is actively recruiting outside workers. CRS concludes that, answered honestly, JOLTS openings "are unlikely to be ghost jobs." The latest figure was 7.1 million openings in August 2026. Those openings are real by definition. The listings you see on job boards are a different, larger and messier set.
Why companies post them
CRS lists the deliberate reasons employers give, or are reported to have. Employers may use a posting to:
- gauge the pool of candidates, or collect resumes for hiring later,
- suggest the company is growing, either to tell current staff they are replaceable or that help is coming, or to attract investors,
- show they recruited a diverse pool when they plan to hire an internal candidate, or
- wait for an exceptional candidate rather than fill the role now.
In a Resume Builder survey of 650 hiring managers reported by Fortune, the reasons given for posting fake listings included giving the impression the company is open to external talent (67%) and hoarding resumes for later (59%). That is a vendor survey, but it lines up with the CRS list.
The accidental causes matter just as much for a candidate, because they are easier to check:
- Changed plans. A budget gets cut or a reorganization freezes hiring, and the posting stays up.
- Copied listings. Job boards copy postings from other websites. CRS notes that an employer may remove a filled job from its own site "not realizing it was copied elsewhere."
- Staffing agencies sometimes post openings to show clients they can attract talent.
Scams are a separate category. CRS cites the FTC's Consumer Sentinel data showing that reports of job and employment agency scams nearly tripled from 2020 to 2024.
Signals to check before you apply
No single signal proves a posting is a ghost job. Plenty of real roles stay up for weeks, and plenty of evergreen postings are honest about being evergreen. The point is to collect evidence and decide how much effort a posting deserves.
| Signal | How to check | How much it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Not on the employer's own careers page | Search the company's careers site for the title or job ID | Strong. A listing that only exists on an aggregator is often a stale copy. |
| First published long ago | Look at the posted date, and for Greenhouse boards the public API (below) | Moderate. Old is not fake, but it lowers the odds. |
| Reposted again and again | Search the title and company and look for the same role with new dates | Moderate. Can mean a hard role to fill, or a standing pipeline. |
| Says it is a talent pool or future opening | Read the first and last paragraphs | Strong, and honest. It is a pipeline, not a vacancy. |
| No team, manager, start date or pay range | Read the description against others at the same company | Weak alone. Many real postings are vague. |
| Hiring freeze or layoffs in the news | Search the company name with "layoffs" or "hiring freeze" | Moderate. Postings often lag decisions. |
| Recruiter cannot give a timeline | Ask directly once you have a contact | Strong. A real vacancy has a rough date. |
Check the employer's own board
This is the most useful habit. If a role shows up on a job board but not on the company's own careers page, the copy is the likeliest to be stale. Apply on the employer's site when you can.
Check when it was first published
Many employers' careers pages run on a public applicant tracking system, and
some of those expose dates you can read yourself. Greenhouse is the easiest. Its
Job Board API documentation
says GET requests need no authentication, and each job in the response carries a
first_published date and an updated_at date. A posting at
job-boards.greenhouse.io/acme/jobs/1234567 lives on the board acme, so this
address lists every job on it:
https://boards-api.greenhouse.io/v1/boards/acme/jobs
Find your job ID and read first_published. Use that rather than
updated_at, which is the date of the latest change rather than the date the
role first went up. Our post on
Greenhouse application status covers the
same API from the other direction: a job that has vanished from the list is
closed.
Read the posting for honest pipeline language
Some employers tell you outright. Phrases like "talent community," "future opportunities" or "we are always looking" describe a pipeline. That is not deceptive, and it is exactly what Ontario now requires employers to disclose, but it is not a vacancy, and it deserves less of your time than a role with a start date.
Ask
If you reach a recruiter, ask when they hope to have someone start and whether the role is approved. A real vacancy has a rough answer.
Rule out a scam
Separate from ghost jobs, check for the scam signs the FTC lists. "Honest employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job." No honest employer will send you a check to deposit and then ask you to send part of the money on. A promise of a lot of money for little work is, in the FTC's words, "almost certainly a scam." Report these at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
What the law is starting to say
Lawmakers have noticed, and the proposals share a shape: say whether a vacancy is real, give a timeline, and take the posting down once the job is filled. Here is where each stands, checked against official sources on 17 October 2026.
| Jurisdiction | Measure | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario, Canada | Employment Standards Act job posting rules | In force since 1 January 2026 |
| New York | Senate bill S8877 (Assembly A6292-A) | Passed both chambers 2 June 2026; no governor action on the record |
| New Jersey | Senate bill S-3509 and related bills | Cleared the Senate Labor Committee; not law |
| Kentucky | House Bill 342 (2026 session) | Referred to committee 21 January 2026; no further action |
| California | Assembly Bill 1251 | Passed the Assembly; held in Senate Appropriations since 29 August 2025 |
| US Congress | None found | CRS found no bills explicitly addressing ghost jobs (April 2025) |
Ontario is the one place with rules in force. Since 1 January 2026, an employer with 25 or more employees must state in a publicly advertised posting whether it is for an existing vacancy, which the Ontario government defines as "a position that is imminently available for a qualified candidate to fill." Employers must also tell interviewed applicants whether a hiring decision has been made within 45 days of their last interview, and must disclose in the posting if they use AI to screen, assess or select applicants.
New York has the most specific US bill. As written, S8877 would apply to employers with at least 100 employees and to third-party job boards. A job ad would have to say, in capital letters and bold type, either "THIS POSTING IS FOR A CURRENT VACANCY AND THE EMPLOYER INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION BY (DATE)," a "NO SOONER THAN (DATE)" version for hires more than 90 days out, or that it "IS NOT FOR A CURRENT VACANCY BUT THE EMPLOYER IS SEEKING RESUMES TO REVIEW IN THE FUTURE WHEN JOBS BECOME AVAILABLE." Filled roles would have to come down within two weeks. The fine starts at $2,500 per publication or platform and doubles for each further 30 days without a fix. The Senate's bill page shows it passed the Senate 39 to 19 on 28 April 2026 and the Assembly on 2 June 2026. Neither chamber's record shows it delivered to or signed by the governor.
New Jersey lawmakers have introduced several versions since 2024. Senator Paul Moriarty's S-3509, which would require a vacancy statement, an estimated time to fill and removal of filled postings, with civil penalties of $1,000 to $5,000, cleared the Senate Labor Committee 3 to 2 in March 2025. Kentucky's HB 342 would bar ghost job postings outright, but has not moved since its committee referral. California's AB 1251, from Assemblymember Marc Berman, would require private employers to state "whether the posting is for a vacancy for the advertised position or not," in the words of the CRS brief. It passed the Assembly, and the CalMatters Digital Democracy record shows its latest action as "In committee: Held under submission" on 29 August 2025, in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
At the federal level, CRS found no bills in Congress explicitly aimed at ghost jobs as of April 2025. Federal law against deceptive practices exists, but CRS notes that using it here "would likely present legal challenges," because an employer's intent to hire is hard to prove. A Columbia Law Review essay argues the FTC could act under its existing authority anyway. For now, that is an argument, not enforcement.
This is general information about pending and enacted rules, not legal advice.
How to protect your time
You cannot eliminate ghost jobs from your search. You can make them cheap.
- Apply where the job lives. Use the employer's own careers page. It is the copy most likely to be current, and it is where a closed role disappears first.
- Favor fresh postings. Old postings are not always fake, but newer ones are more likely to be actively recruited. If you only have time for some applications today, start with the newest.
- Scale effort to evidence. A posting with a named team, a start date and a pay range deserves a carefully tailored application. A two-year-old evergreen listing gets a quicker one, or none.
- Count applications, not hopes. Some share of what you send will go nowhere for reasons you will never see. Plan your volume with that in mind. Our post on how many applications it takes to get a job shows how to work out a number from your own interview rate.
- Use people. A referral is the strongest check there is, because an employee can tell you whether the role is real. A New York Fed study of one large US company found referred applicants were more than twice as likely to be interviewed as job board applicants.
- Set a follow-up rule and move on. Decide in advance how long you wait before following up once, and then stop thinking about that posting.
The wider plan, mixing volume, fit and referrals, is in our job search strategy guide.
Where ApplyEze fits
ApplyEze watches the career boards of more than 100,000 employers directly, and we drop closed and stale postings from the pool, so a role that has already come down, or a listing that has gone stale, drops out of the matches you see. That removes some of the ghost risk, not all of it. A posting can be live, recent and still not a real vacancy, and no tool can see an employer's intent. The signals above still apply to anything you choose to send.