In a previous article, I mentioned how ghost jobs play a significant factor in making it difficult for job seekers to find employment. Ghost jobs are defined as “…job advertisements for positions that don’t exist or are not intended to be filled immediately.

These listings can appear in various forms, from entirely fictitious roles to outdated job openings that remain posted long after the position has been filled.” As stated on Gotoro.

These types of jobs are painfully tedious in the job market, but have you ever wondered why they exist in the first place? It’s time we finally get to the bottom of this, once and for all.

First, it’s worth noting the intense increase in ghost job postings that took place recently this year.

“As many as 4 in 10 companies say they’ve posted a “fake job listing” this year, and 3 in 10 companies say they’re currently advertising for a role that isn’t real. That’s according to a May survey of 649 hiring managers from Resume Builder, the career site.” Senior Work Reporter Jennifer Liu stated in CNBC Make It.

The average individual may look at this as a group of scammers who post fake jobs online as a way of making a profit off deceiving desperate job seekers. However, what if I told you that the concept of ghost jobs is not as quickly deceptive as people think it is?

According to Senior Content Manager and Hiring Manager from Resume Genius Geoffrey Scott, that’s exactly how it is. “Ghost jobs are not scams. They’re from real companies, but they are openings that don’t exist,” he stated in a CNBC article.

“That company is not hiring for that role at this moment. They might be interested in hiring for that role in the future, or maybe they were hiring for it, but due to budget cuts, those roles were closed or put on hold.”

Since 2023, I’ve applied to multiple jobs on LinkedIn, and in many cases, I’ve never received a response from anyone. It is somewhat comforting to know that the jobs I’ve been ghosted from may not have been designed for me to have been ghosted in the first place.

Maybe it was a company’s true intention to hire me for a position, and perhaps I was the perfect candidate that they wanted to hire for employment, but due to financial circumstances, they couldn’t afford to hire me.

Even if that’s the case, it still doesn’t change the fact that I wasted my time and energy applying for something that wasn’t going to work out anyway.

If you didn’t have the financial means to hire someone for a position, why would you advertise it and give the impression that you were in the first place? This is a problematic situation that has affected not only job seekers who can’t find employment but also job companies themselves because the rate of hiring employees has drastically decreased over the years.

“Revelio Labs, a U.S.-based workforce intelligence company, found that the rate of hires per job posting has essentially halved over the past five years.” Lead Producer Anuz Thapa stated. “In 2019, there were eight hires for every 10 job postings. By 2024, that number had dropped to four hires per 10 job postings.”

This statistic is very troubling for all parties involved because it devalues the meaning of job postings. Job postings are supposed to be an opportunity for job seekers to find employment and for companies to build a well-established staff of workers.

Statistics like the one mentioned above make it difficult for anybody to benefit from the job market due to job seekers not being employed and job companies being low on staff workers.

“I think this is a pretty worrying development because it just softens the signal of what a job posting means,” Chief Economist Lisa Simon from Revelio Labs stated.

“And whether there is truly a hiring intention behind that from the employer’s point of view,” she continued. The only silver lining that we should be grateful for is that even though the American job market had slowed down in progress back in July, the labor market status continues to be healthy.

However, this silver lining quickly becomes short-lived when you consider how ghost jobs affect the labor market.

“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,” Senior Partner from Korn Ferry Dan Kaplan, stated. “Anecdotally, people will tell you that it’s very tough out there.

We’ve talked about this notion of unhirables. People who are out of work get laid off and just can’t find a job. They can’t buy an interview.”

This goes without saying that ghost jobs are a problematic societal issue in the job market. Even if companies are sincere in hiring someone for a job position in the future, posting fake job opportunities can cause long-term damage to the company itself.

“Posting jobs without an intent to hire erodes trust,” Talent Acquisition Partner from McAfee Brian Fink stated in SHRM.

“This practice creates mirages in the job market, wastes candidates’ time, and creates false hope.”

In other words, ghost jobs can ruin a company’s reputation and drive away future job seekers due to the lack of trust they have in the company’s hiring process. In conclusion, ghost jobs may not always have the intention of deceiving the public, and there are actual companies that might have some job openings that are not set to employ anyone now.

However, the deception is real. Some real people spend hundreds of dollars going to school to obtain a degree, have a laundry list of student loan debt to pay off, and all they want is a job to make their career worthwhile.