You’ve seen them: shiny job adverts promising your dream role, a competitive salary, and the vague but hopeful line “apply now.” You spend an hour polishing your CV, write a heartfelt cover letter, hit send, and hear nothing. Ghost jobs are positions advertised with little or no real intent to hire. The trend has been flagged repeatedly in recent years by major outlets and platform analyses.
Estimates vary, but platform studies and industry surveys put the scale at tens of percent of listings in some sectors, enough that the phenomenon is no longer a one-off annoyance but a structural issue affecting hiring markets in the UK, US, and India.
What are ghost jobs, why employers post them, how common they really are (with numbers), the practical harms for candidates, and how regulators and lawmakers are starting to respond.
What Exactly Is A “Ghost Job”?
A ghost job is an advertised vacancy that, in practice, has little real chance of being filled, either because the role is only being used to collect résumés, to test the market, or simply to signal that the company is “growing.” In some cases, the role was never budgeted or approved; in others, it’s an “evergreen” posting used as a long-term candidate pool.
Calling it “fake” is tempting, but the reality is messier: many ghost listings sit in a grey area between strategic recruiting and deception. Employers often say they’re building pipelines or benchmarking pay; job seekers call it a waste of time.
That tension explains why the practice sits uneasily between a routine HR tactic and a consumer complaint. Recent platform analyses and media reports show the practice is common enough to merit attention, not just eye-rolling.
How Widespread Is It?
Different studies capture different slices of the market, but the headline: a sizable minority of postings appear not to lead to hires. Platform analyses have suggested that roughly one in five US listings on some recruitment platforms go unfilled, while UK studies have reported figures in the 30–40% range for particular datasets. Industry surveys also report that around 40% of employers admit to posting vacancies to build candidate pools or for image reasons.
Those are not meaningless decimals. If ~20–40% of listings are ghosts in certain sectors, then millions of job applications and hours of applicant time are affected annually. Labour market researchers and hiring-platform analysts point to these numbers as evidence that the problem is systemic, not anecdotal.
Why Employers Post Ghost Jobs
There are five common motives employers name for ghost postings.
- Talent-pooling-Recruiters keep “evergreen” ads to collect résumés for future, uncertain hiring needs.
- Market testing- firms post roles to see what salary candidates demand or how many people apply.
- Signalling, an open role makes a company look like it’s expanding, which can flatter investors and clients.
- Employee management- advertising can reassure or spur existing staff by signaling incoming support.
- Branding and search visibility- more active listings help companies appear in job-board searches.
Ghost Jobs As A Labour-Market Control Mechanism
Seen through a power lens, ghost jobs stop being mere recruiting laziness and start to look like a governance tactic. It is a low-cost way for employers to manage expectations, discipline workers, and extract bargaining leverage without firing a shot.
By keeping vacancy lists perpetually active while refusing to meaningfully adjust pay or speed up hiring, employers can create the appearance of plentiful opportunity even as they preserve downward pressure on offers.
The visible abundance of listings weakens collective bargaining signals, if candidates believe there are “always” roles out there, individual willingness to push for better pay or to hold out for higher offers is eroded.
Time and attention become asymmetric currency. Applicants spend hours tailoring applications while employers, who pay nothing until they actually hire, can wait for their ideal (or cheaper) candidate.
This form of control also works internally. Perpetual hiring posts serve as a silent reminder to current employees that replacements are available. A behavioural nudge that reduces turnover demands and suppresses wage demands inside the firm.
Externally, reposted ads and unchanged salary bands act as anchors that reset market reference points: even if living costs or competing offers rise, the official ask shown in hundreds of listings becomes the psychological baseline for what a role “should” pay.
Employers use these postings to collect candidate behaviour and salary responses for model-training or price discovery and they have an industrialized mechanism that shapes not only hiring outcomes but the very norms of wage negotiation.
Framing ghost jobs this way changes remedies. It’s about restoring bargaining transparency and rebalancing the temporal asymmetry between applicants and employers.
Policies that force clearer disclosures (funding status, expected hire timeline), limit indefinite reposting, and require explicit consent and deletion rules for applicant data would not only protect candidates’ privacy, they would also blunt a covert tool of labour-market discipline and help recalibrate worker expectations back toward genuine bargaining power.
Time, Hope, And Personal Data
A job application is not a five-minute tap: candidates invest time writing tailored cover letters, preparing work samples, and sometimes even turning down other interviews. When a listing is a ghost, that investment produces only frustration.
Surveys of applicants show growing scepticism: many now suspect vacancies are simply fishing trips for résumé databases rather than real roles. That cynicism hurts trust in job boards and even in employers’ brands.
There’s also a privacy angle. résumés contain sensitive data: employment history, contact details, sometimes identity documents, or salary history. Privacy regulators and experts warn that collecting such data without a genuine recruitment purpose can violate data-protection rules in jurisdictions with strict privacy laws.
In the UK and EU, data regulators have signalled that processing personal data under false pretences can breach the law. In countries developing privacy frameworks, critics worry about candidate data being stored and reused without clear consent. So the harm is both emotional and material.
Also Read: India’s Twisted Economic Growth Story: No Jobs In Sight
Are Ghost Jobs Illegal?
Short answer: mostly not yet, but that’s changing. In the UK and EU, there’s no specific ban on posting a vacancy you don’t intend to fill. However, privacy and consumer-protection frameworks can apply: data protection authorities (like the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office) have warned that collecting applications without a legitimate purpose risks breaching the law.
In the US, there’s no federal statute directly outlawing ghost ads, but the Federal Trade Commission has framed misleading commercial practices as a concern, and lawmakers have introduced or discussed “truth in job advertising” measures. Some US states have started to act: for example, state legislatures have debated, and in a few cases passed, rules requiring clearer disclosure about whether a post reflects a genuine, funded vacancy.
Regulatory action is still piecemeal, but momentum is clear: where platforms and governments see harm, rules follow. Expect more policy proposals that target deceptive job advertising and strengthen candidate protections, particularly around the misuse of personal data. For job seekers, that means better transparency may be coming, but not overnight.
Local Flavour, Same Problem
Indian job markets show the same pattern. Major Indian publications and industry commentators have documented a rise in postings that are later reposted, cancelled, or never filled. Analysts estimate a noticeable slice, often put in the 20–30% range in sector studies, of advertised roles behave like ghost jobs, especially in tech, retail, and construction. Employers frequently point to the same motives: talent pooling, salary benchmarking, and employer branding.
The legal angle in India is presently limited: there is no explicit law against ghost postings, and deceptive-advertising statutes are rarely applied to recruitment. However, privacy experts flag that India’s evolving data-protection conversation could change the calculus if employers are found to be using applicants’ personal data improperly.
Practically, the current risk to Indian employers is reputational rather than legal. As job markets mature and candidate scrutiny increases, the pressure on employers to be transparent will grow.
What Job-Seekers And Employers Should Do
Job seekers should treat online listings with healthy scepticism. Prioritise roles at companies with clear hiring timelines, check for recruiter contact and concrete next steps, and keep a running log of applications so you don’t overinvest in vague posts. When asked for sensitive documents, ask what the hiring timeline is and how your data will be used.
Employers should practice transparency. If they must keep evergreen ads, it should be labelled clearly. Be transparent about whether a role is active, how long applications will be kept, and how candidate data will be used. That’s low effort and high trust.
Regulators and platforms should have clearer guidance on honesty in job advertising and stronger privacy enforcement, where data is collected under dubious pretences would reduce the harm.
Ghost jobs started as a recruiting hack. The real test now is whether hiring markets will fix the leak, or leave candidates to navigate the fog alone.
Images: Google Images
Sources: WION, The Economic Times, Firstpost
Find the blogger: Katyayani Joshi
This post is tagged under: ghost jobs, hiring freeze, labour market, job market reality, recruitment crisis, wage stagnation, hiring slowdown, employment trends, future of work, labour economics, workplace power, recruitment transparency, job search struggles, unemployment narrative, wage negotiation, corporate hiring, HR practices, employment policy, worker rights, job seekers, career uncertainty, data privacy in hiring, AI in recruitment
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