This is going to be very hard to enforce on a Federal level, let alone pass.
Companies are going to play shell games with the titles, responsibilities, and org structure just enough. There might also be 1st Amendment issues, too. The required reporting numbers will be hollow. The end result will be that it will be on the books, but the government won't have any enforceable actions for years.
And when you do see action, it will drag on for years. The feds go after big fish like Microsoft, which will drag it out. Meanwhile, thousands of your Series B-sized companies that are the biggest culprits, will fly under the radar.
I think you're going to see a few states do pass laws like this. The enforcement question will still be there, but it will be on a smaller scale. Results will be varied. Meanwhile, we need to keep naming and shaming companies and recruiters who do this.
If the number is only 17%, I'm not sure we need to ban them.
From my experience the big issue is hiring managers who either 1) are very casual about hiring (i.e. they're willing to wait 6 months and waste everyone's time), or 2) people who like the idea of hiring but keep changing what they want to hire for (like this month we're having issues with testing, so we want a test engineer, but next month we're having issues with embedded software, so we need a new embedded engineer.
I really don't think there are bands of hiring managers posting fake job ads to make their company look more impressive, I think it's just bands of hiring managers who want a senior engineer with direct experience for <140k
My Dad told me he worked for a manager who always kept a job open "just in case" someone good walked through the door. It also made it easier to hire if he got a phone call within his network, because he didn't need to jump through hoops to open the req.
(Although it's not the approach I would take if I was a manager,) I do think there's merit in the approach. It was a real opening that could be filled, just not one that they were actively seeking people for. (IE, if someone applied, the resume would be reviewed.)
This was the 1980s or 1990s, though, so I doubt it was SPAMMed with applicants like what happens today, though.
Last time I was job hunting I found that 80%+ of postings were either dupes or bogus. Very vague description of the job? I'm going to keep seeing it for a long time, clearly they are not actually filling the role. Very specific, odd set of requirements, they're going through the motions but they've already picked the person and the ad is designed to match only that person.
I think they're going about this backwards. Leave the ad up, but they are required to amend it with external hire/internal hire/H-1B when the position is filled. Let people see what has happened in the past. And all jobs must be associated with some entity and indicate how long that entity has existed.
This is explictly restricting speech (restricting the right to advertise for labor) and would have to meet a high first amendment bar in the US.
Pay transparency law supporters have argued successfully that there is a compelling interest in closing gender and racial wage gaps and that salary range information can be mandated in job listings for that purpose. What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the government to control speech?
The compelling interest for state and federal governments would be to ensure a fair marketplace by prohibiting false advertising and deceptive practices. California is considering Assembly Bill 1251 (Banning “ghost” job postings) to deter “unfair competition” in the labor marketplace. <https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab...>
Regarding First Amendment conflicts with commercial speech, the Supreme Court described its four-step analysis in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Public Svc. Comm'n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980) (stating “For commercial speech to come within the First Amendment, it at least must concern lawful activity and not be misleading.”) Hence, the FTC Division of Advertising Practices (DAP) <https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...> has survived legal scrutiny of its enforcement authority due to its compelling interest in fair public markets.
As the Congressional Research Service pointed out, FTC enforcement actions regarding ghost jobs would be difficult, since employer intent is not easily discoverable and consumer harm not easily quantifiable. On the other hand, “While employers generally do not have a legal duty to respond to job applicants, differing responses based on protected characteristics could violate Title VII of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 or other employment laws.” page 2, <https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1297...>
For instance, if an employer used job postings to hire from certain countries or age groups, this would likely violate Title VII since national origin and age are protected classes under Title VII, eg Mobley v Workday (where plaintiffs argue the Workday job postings platform violated Title VII)
<https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/courts/2025/08/21/judge-ord...>
> This is explictly restricting speech (restricting the right to advertise for labor)
If they were advertising for labor, this wouldn't be an issue. The whole problem is that they are not trying to fill the position (or even have a position open).
I want to downvote you, but you are technically correct. I think most of us agree that there exists a compelling interest, but that in practice the case would be made that this should be struck down because it restricts speech, and the captured judiciary would certainly uphold that argument.
Somewhat related, I learned to be very cautious about LinkedIn and their job postings. I hit a couple that looked like regular companies and started to apply, but they were really fake job postings just go harvest your information. Even when you abort the process, it's too late. They take your info and put you on a zillion job sites automatically with endless email spam.
LinkedIn is the absolute worst. For one, there's a checkbox that is clicked by default to "Follow <company>", which essentially rewards a company for posting a job with thousands of followers (job applicants).
I imagine most companies just want followers on LinkedIn.
In the end this is like banning fake news, you just can't.
I suggest people just take a credibility approach. As an example, I no longer bother with HN's "Who's hiring", everything there is bullshit.
Besides, job sites are just social media, their purpose is not to inform, it is to create eyeballs to advertisers. You should discard them, like you should also cancel Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Hey - not everything is bullshit on "Who's hiring" threads. I once got eight rounds of interviews with a company before being ghosted by someone off of an HN thread.
If I wanted to game my stock price and mislead my competition, a bunch of highly specific (and fraudulent) job postings on my website (in combination with other investor-adjacent reporting) would be a great low cost start.
That would be a mistake, because "securities fraud" is one of the few ways you can get smacked for lying to the public. Lying to the public about climate change? Meh, it's hard to prove damages from the lie so you'll probably get away with it. However if you lie to shareholders about global warming, and that factors into your outlook of the company, you'll get smacked with securities fraud suits.
unfortunately this happens in academia too. last year was brutal for most PhDs in business schools because the number of positions dropped significantly compared to the year before, and the ones that were "on the market" weren't all legit. there were several top tier schools that did the first-round interviews or even flyout seminars only to test the waters, with no intention of hiring. the fact that universities and professors thought it was okay to waste candidates' time was in itself telling about the culture in those schools.
The disconnect between academia and private is real and often bizarre.
I have a good friend that's a recruiter for a top 20 flagship research university in the US. Her line is always, "We're education. We don't do things like ghost jobs and ghostings." She'll then often tell stories where she and her colleagues do the exact same thing you hear in the private sector.
Recently she asked me if I thought it was ok to go ahead and fly a candidate out for an interview knowing the funding had just been cut. Her boss (in recruiting) wanted to anyway in case the funding was restored. Luckily the hiring managers refused to go ahead.
So now that another admin is in power, it's useful to have accurate numbers. But during the last several administrations, job posting numbers were used to backstop failing economic activity, especially post covid.
I'm not mad it's happening, I'm mad it's taken this long to do.
The controls summarized in the CNBC piece seem reasonable, or, if not that, then at least not all that onerous.
The controls in the actual proposal are less reasonable: they create finable infractions for any claim in a job ad deemed "misleading" or "inaccurate" (findings of fact that requires a an expensive trial to solve) and prohibit "perpetual postings" or postings made 90 days in advance of hiring dates.
The controls might make it harder to post "ghost jobs" (though: firms posting "ghost jobs" simply to check boxes for outsourcing, offshoring, or visa issuance will have no trouble adhering to the letter of this proposal while evading its spirit), but they will also impact firms that don't do anything resembling "ghost job" hiring.
Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected. There are structural features of hiring that almost guarantee problems: for instance, the interval between making a selection decision about a candidate and actually onboarding them onto the team, during which any number of things can happen to scotch the deal. There's also a basic distributed systems problem of establishing a consensus state between hiring managers, HR teams, and large pools of candidates.
If you're going to go after "ghost job" posters, you should do something much more targeted to what those abusive firms are actually doing, and raise the stakes past $2500/infraction.
Making people able to sue for anyone feeling bad about not having gotten the job is a path you should not take. We have something similar in Germany and its horrible for companies. Leeches bleeding you dry.
Maybe it would be simpler to just impose a nominal tax on the total number of job openings a company creates throughout the year. Maybe as a % of the role's salary. You could even rebate it against employer payroll taxes so they get the money back when they actually hire someone.
I'm not familiar with the process of passing a law. Is it one of those situations where the ask is open to negotiation? Like, if I want to be given a finger I first need to ask for the whole arm kinda deal? If it's the case, then as you said, perhaps the real ask is what's in the summary.
I don't think it's unreasonable or onerous to shift the burden of hiring onto companies well-suited and minimally impacted by this process compared to individuals.
The fines should definitely be proportional though, with larger companies facing very severe infractions.
> Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected.
True, even the best cases have a nonzero baseline level of dissatisfaction. It reminds me of this quote, where one character publicly accused a judge of being corrupt based on rumor, and another character is asking whether she had anything except town rumor to go on.
> “Tell me, Royesse, what steps did you take beforehand, to assure yourself of the man’s guilt?”
> [...] Her frown deepened. "The townsmen applauded..."
> "Indeed. On average, one-half of all supplicants to come before a judge's bench must depart angry and disappointed. But not, by that, necessarily wronged."
How is that at all unreasonable? Why is misinformation somehow ok when it directly harms workers? Don't like it that you have to change your behavior because of some abusers? Sorry but that's how society works for the rest of us.
> (essentially banning HR ghosting in the interview process)
(Joke)
Let me guess: Companies will start immediately rejecting candidates after they submit an application, and after every interview. Then, when they want to move forward they will re-invite a candidate.
Sure, this is a good step. But there's something the government can do that would be much more effective: Make their own job board. California already has this by the way, but it's a bit clunky and is intended for unemployed folks. We need a serious LinkedIn competitor from the government. Just like USPS competes with UPS and Fedex, and keeps them honest, a job board run by the government would raise the quality of all job boards, effectively setting a floor on how anti-user they can be (and we all know, LinkedIn is only a job board ostensibly, it's really a dark pattern factory that nags you to pay a monthly fee for random services almost no one needs).
I really, really dislike ghost jobs, and I think they are way more than 17%. I have to agree, though, that finding a legal way to define and enforce them, that doesn't amount to a solution worse than the problem, will be quite difficult.
Good luck getting anywhere with this... Companies will lobby hard to squash it.
Ghost jobs help companies do one important thing: hire the person they already selected and want in the position but have to go through the "interview" process to make things look "transparent." They post the job, "interview" some folks, included their preferred candidate, then miraculously "select" their preferred candidate over everyone else.
The problem is most "ghost jobs" aren't: They're real jobs with a real intention to hire, but the hiring team can't come to a decision. I've seen it time and time again: A role gets reposted 2, 3, 4 times until the one curmudgeon on the team finally relents and somebody gets hired. It's a tremendous waste of time but it isn't a "ghost job". I predict this legislation will have approximately zero impact on people posting roles that don't actually get filled.
The hallmarks of ghost job posting are so obvious that detecting them could probably be automated now.
- Recurrent and yearlong ad for the same position, with numerous applicants (sometimes in the hundreds, if not thousands). This is probably the poster child of the ghost job ad.
- Unrealistic compensation for required skills, guaranteed to weed out the junior (skill issue) and the senior (comp issue). This could also signal that the company is looking to hire from offshore markets.
- Plain unrealistic skill requirements. Even companies that hire "full-stack" know that there's a practical limit, beyond which it's probably better to spread out responsibilities, if we want any kind of productivity gain. Being unreasonably greedy about skills might be a sign that the poster wants a cop out when candidates actually turn up. "Yeah, he was capable of writing his own OS kernel as we asked, but his CSS was shit".
If endeavors like the present proposal prove inept, there are enough tools to supplement posted job ads with metrics meant to easily signal to job seekers and investors something useful about the companies posting them, with a nice and accessible UI.
The other day there was an article about streaming services driving viewers back to piracy due to their shenanigans and the resulting subpar user experience. If LinkedIn and friends continue to pretend that it's technologically beyond them to solve ghost job posting on their own network, eventually it will be addressed somewhere else.
My companies have posted an awful lot of job ads in earnest over the years that haven't found suitable candidates, despite an absolute barrage of slop resumes.
> The first time Thompson, 53, [...] Could it be all the roles he was submitting to weren’t actually real?
Probably. But there's also another obvious explanation for why he wasn't hearing back. (Widespread ageism, which is already illegal in the US, but many, many companies don't care.)
The problem of the ghost jobs existing in first place is because of weak HR. HR that does not have education, can not be influential strategic personnel necessary to steward management toward right decisions. Ghost jobs are also an alternative to marketing since companies see it as a way to market themselves as successful company. Because there is no one to stop such foolish decisions, we see effect on market.
57 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 70.6 ms ] threadCompanies are going to play shell games with the titles, responsibilities, and org structure just enough. There might also be 1st Amendment issues, too. The required reporting numbers will be hollow. The end result will be that it will be on the books, but the government won't have any enforceable actions for years.
And when you do see action, it will drag on for years. The feds go after big fish like Microsoft, which will drag it out. Meanwhile, thousands of your Series B-sized companies that are the biggest culprits, will fly under the radar.
I think you're going to see a few states do pass laws like this. The enforcement question will still be there, but it will be on a smaller scale. Results will be varied. Meanwhile, we need to keep naming and shaming companies and recruiters who do this.
Great idea in theory, tough in practice.
From my experience the big issue is hiring managers who either 1) are very casual about hiring (i.e. they're willing to wait 6 months and waste everyone's time), or 2) people who like the idea of hiring but keep changing what they want to hire for (like this month we're having issues with testing, so we want a test engineer, but next month we're having issues with embedded software, so we need a new embedded engineer.
I really don't think there are bands of hiring managers posting fake job ads to make their company look more impressive, I think it's just bands of hiring managers who want a senior engineer with direct experience for <140k
(Although it's not the approach I would take if I was a manager,) I do think there's merit in the approach. It was a real opening that could be filled, just not one that they were actively seeking people for. (IE, if someone applied, the resume would be reviewed.)
This was the 1980s or 1990s, though, so I doubt it was SPAMMed with applicants like what happens today, though.
Last time I was job hunting I found that 80%+ of postings were either dupes or bogus. Very vague description of the job? I'm going to keep seeing it for a long time, clearly they are not actually filling the role. Very specific, odd set of requirements, they're going through the motions but they've already picked the person and the ad is designed to match only that person.
I think they're going about this backwards. Leave the ad up, but they are required to amend it with external hire/internal hire/H-1B when the position is filled. Let people see what has happened in the past. And all jobs must be associated with some entity and indicate how long that entity has existed.
Pay transparency law supporters have argued successfully that there is a compelling interest in closing gender and racial wage gaps and that salary range information can be mandated in job listings for that purpose. What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the government to control speech?
Free speech is about expressing opinion and fact. It doesn't grant you the right to lie and deceive.
Regarding First Amendment conflicts with commercial speech, the Supreme Court described its four-step analysis in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Public Svc. Comm'n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980) (stating “For commercial speech to come within the First Amendment, it at least must concern lawful activity and not be misleading.”) Hence, the FTC Division of Advertising Practices (DAP) <https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...> has survived legal scrutiny of its enforcement authority due to its compelling interest in fair public markets.
As the Congressional Research Service pointed out, FTC enforcement actions regarding ghost jobs would be difficult, since employer intent is not easily discoverable and consumer harm not easily quantifiable. On the other hand, “While employers generally do not have a legal duty to respond to job applicants, differing responses based on protected characteristics could violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or other employment laws.” page 2, <https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1297...>
For instance, if an employer used job postings to hire from certain countries or age groups, this would likely violate Title VII since national origin and age are protected classes under Title VII, eg Mobley v Workday (where plaintiffs argue the Workday job postings platform violated Title VII) <https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/courts/2025/08/21/judge-ord...>
If they were advertising for labor, this wouldn't be an issue. The whole problem is that they are not trying to fill the position (or even have a position open).
I imagine most companies just want followers on LinkedIn.
I suggest people just take a credibility approach. As an example, I no longer bother with HN's "Who's hiring", everything there is bullshit.
Besides, job sites are just social media, their purpose is not to inform, it is to create eyeballs to advertisers. You should discard them, like you should also cancel Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Generally when I'm looking at a company's financials more employees means less profitable.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
I have a good friend that's a recruiter for a top 20 flagship research university in the US. Her line is always, "We're education. We don't do things like ghost jobs and ghostings." She'll then often tell stories where she and her colleagues do the exact same thing you hear in the private sector.
Recently she asked me if I thought it was ok to go ahead and fly a candidate out for an interview knowing the funding had just been cut. Her boss (in recruiting) wanted to anyway in case the funding was restored. Luckily the hiring managers refused to go ahead.
I'm not mad it's happening, I'm mad it's taken this long to do.
The controls in the actual proposal are less reasonable: they create finable infractions for any claim in a job ad deemed "misleading" or "inaccurate" (findings of fact that requires a an expensive trial to solve) and prohibit "perpetual postings" or postings made 90 days in advance of hiring dates.
The controls might make it harder to post "ghost jobs" (though: firms posting "ghost jobs" simply to check boxes for outsourcing, offshoring, or visa issuance will have no trouble adhering to the letter of this proposal while evading its spirit), but they will also impact firms that don't do anything resembling "ghost job" hiring.
Firms working at their dead level best to be up front with candidates still produce steady feeds of candidates who feel misled or unfairly rejected. There are structural features of hiring that almost guarantee problems: for instance, the interval between making a selection decision about a candidate and actually onboarding them onto the team, during which any number of things can happen to scotch the deal. There's also a basic distributed systems problem of establishing a consensus state between hiring managers, HR teams, and large pools of candidates.
If you're going to go after "ghost job" posters, you should do something much more targeted to what those abusive firms are actually doing, and raise the stakes past $2500/infraction.
The fines should definitely be proportional though, with larger companies facing very severe infractions.
True, even the best cases have a nonzero baseline level of dissatisfaction. It reminds me of this quote, where one character publicly accused a judge of being corrupt based on rumor, and another character is asking whether she had anything except town rumor to go on.
> “Tell me, Royesse, what steps did you take beforehand, to assure yourself of the man’s guilt?”
> [...] Her frown deepened. "The townsmen applauded..."
> "Indeed. On average, one-half of all supplicants to come before a judge's bench must depart angry and disappointed. But not, by that, necessarily wronged."
-- The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
(Joke)
Let me guess: Companies will start immediately rejecting candidates after they submit an application, and after every interview. Then, when they want to move forward they will re-invite a candidate.
> · There is no intent to fill the role
> · It’s not currently funded
> · It’s posted to collect résumés, test the market, or boost visibility
> · It’s recycled indefinitely without an actual opening
https://www.truthinjobads.org/faq
Even if this gets passed, it's probably unenforceable.
Ghost jobs help companies do one important thing: hire the person they already selected and want in the position but have to go through the "interview" process to make things look "transparent." They post the job, "interview" some folks, included their preferred candidate, then miraculously "select" their preferred candidate over everyone else.
- Recurrent and yearlong ad for the same position, with numerous applicants (sometimes in the hundreds, if not thousands). This is probably the poster child of the ghost job ad.
- Unrealistic compensation for required skills, guaranteed to weed out the junior (skill issue) and the senior (comp issue). This could also signal that the company is looking to hire from offshore markets.
- Plain unrealistic skill requirements. Even companies that hire "full-stack" know that there's a practical limit, beyond which it's probably better to spread out responsibilities, if we want any kind of productivity gain. Being unreasonably greedy about skills might be a sign that the poster wants a cop out when candidates actually turn up. "Yeah, he was capable of writing his own OS kernel as we asked, but his CSS was shit".
If endeavors like the present proposal prove inept, there are enough tools to supplement posted job ads with metrics meant to easily signal to job seekers and investors something useful about the companies posting them, with a nice and accessible UI.
The other day there was an article about streaming services driving viewers back to piracy due to their shenanigans and the resulting subpar user experience. If LinkedIn and friends continue to pretend that it's technologically beyond them to solve ghost job posting on their own network, eventually it will be addressed somewhere else.
My companies have posted an awful lot of job ads in earnest over the years that haven't found suitable candidates, despite an absolute barrage of slop resumes.
Probably. But there's also another obvious explanation for why he wasn't hearing back. (Widespread ageism, which is already illegal in the US, but many, many companies don't care.)