You applied to 100 jobs last month. About 30 of them didn't exist.
Not "the role was filled." Not "they went with an internal candidate." The job was never real. Nobody was ever going to get hired. The posting was there to serve a purpose that had nothing to do with you.
The numbers are worse than you think
27.4% of U.S. LinkedIn listings are ghost jobs. A Resume Builder survey found 3 in 10 companies have fake job postings live right now. Not by accident. On purpose.
81% of recruiters admit their employer posts roles that don't exist or are already filled. In tech, 40% of companies posted fake jobs in the past year. 79% of those are still up.
Los Angeles has a 30.5% ghost job rate. But it's not a local thing. It's everywhere.
Why companies do this
The reasons are almost never about hiring. That's the part that should piss you off.
Companies post jobs to look like they're growing. If you're raising a Series B and your careers page shows 40 open roles, investors see scale. Whether those roles are real doesn't matter. The perception is the product.
Some companies post jobs to do free market research. They want to see who applies, what salary expectations look like, how deep the talent pool goes in a given city. You spend 45 minutes on your application. They get a data point. Nobody was ever going to call you.
Others use ghost postings as a retention tool. "Look at all these open roles. We could replace you tomorrow." It's a threat dressed up as a careers page.
And then there's plain negligence. A role gets filled internally. Nobody turns off the auto-renew in the ATS. The posting sits there for 6 months collecting applications from people who think it's real. This is probably the most common one, and somehow it's also the most insulting. They couldn't even be bothered to click "close."
15 hours you're not getting back
Each application takes about 30 minutes when you actually do it right. Reading the description, adjusting your resume, writing responses, submitting. Apply to 100 jobs in a month, 30% are ghosts, that's 30 wasted applications. 15 hours. Gone.
But the time isn't the worst part.
You applied. You were qualified. You heard nothing. And you start wondering if you're the problem. Maybe your resume sucks. Maybe you need to learn another framework. Maybe you're too expensive. You internalize the rejection when there was nothing to be rejected from.
The job didn't exist.
72% of job seekers report negative mental health impacts from drawn-out hiring processes. Ghost jobs are a huge part of that. Every fake listing adds another false data point to your "maybe I'm not good enough" story.
How to spot them
None of these are guaranteed. But stacking them together filters out most of the garbage.
Check the posting date. If it's been up for 60+ days, especially at a tech company, something is off. Most real positions fill within 30-45 days. Three months? Either it's a ghost, the role is impossibly niche, or the company can't get their act together. None of those are encouraging.
Read the actual description. Ghost jobs are almost always vague. "Looking for a talented engineer to join our growing team." No tech stack mentioned. No team name. No specific project. Real hiring managers get specific because they need a specific person. Vagueness is a tell.
Look at the company's pulse. Are they active on social media? Have they made recent hires you can see on LinkedIn? Do they have an engineering blog that's been updated this year? A company listing 20 open roles with zero public activity for 4 months is suspicious.
Cross-reference the source. If a job shows up on Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and three other boards but isn't on the company's own careers page, it's a stale aggregation. Some distribution service is auto-syndicating a dead listing that nobody bothered to kill.
Job boards won't fix this
Job boards make money from listings. More listings means more page views. More page views means more ad revenue or higher subscription fees. A ghost job and a real job generate the same engagement metrics.
Indeed, LinkedIn, Glassdoor. None of them have an incentive to remove ghost postings. The ghost job is doing exactly what their business model needs. Just not what you need.
The platforms you trust to help you find work are economically rewarded for keeping fake listings live. That's a broken foundation and no amount of UI polish fixes it.
Regulation is coming, slowly
Ontario passed legislation requiring companies to disclose whether a posting is for a real, active vacancy. The U.S. has the TJAAA bill working through Congress with similar requirements.
When lawmakers write bills specifically about fake job postings, the problem has gone past "industry nuisance" into "systemic failure." But regulation is slow. Enforcement is slower. You can't wait for Congress to fix your job search.
Stop searching for jobs. Start tracking companies.
Sounds backwards. But think about it.
The ghost job problem exists because you're interacting with listings, not companies. A listing can be fake. A company can't fake its existence, its tech stack, or whether it's actually made hires recently.
Pick 10-20 companies where your tech stack genuinely overlaps. Track them. Watch for new roles at those specific companies. When one of them posts something, you know it's more likely to be real because you've been watching the company, not a random feed of disconnected listings.
This is what I built Remoet around. 725+ remote tech companies, tracked, with real tech stack data. You star the ones that match your skills, and your AI agent monitors them for you. It doesn't eliminate ghost jobs entirely. Some companies will always play games. But you go from fishing in a pool that's 30% fake to watching a handful of companies you've already vetted.
Apply fewer. Apply better.
The instinct when you learn about ghost jobs is to compensate with volume. "If 30% are fake, I'll just apply to 3x as many." That's the trap. More volume means more time wasted on ghosts, more silence, more false rejections eating at your confidence.
The opposite works. Narrow your target. Verify the company is real and active. Check the posting date. Look at the tech stack. Then apply once, with effort, to something that's actually there.
30% of what you're applying to doesn't exist. The fix isn't applying harder. It's not applying to bullshit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a ghost job?
A ghost job is a posting for a position that isn't actually open or that the company never intends to fill. It exists for other reasons: signaling growth to investors, collecting market data, pressuring existing employees, or just negligence where nobody closed the listing after the role was filled internally.
How common are ghost jobs?
Between 27-30% of job listings, depending on the study. Resume Builder found 3 in 10 companies currently have fake postings live. In tech specifically, 40% of companies posted at least one fake job in the past year, and 79% of those are still active.
How do I know if a job posting is fake?
Look for a combination of red flags: the posting has been up for 60+ days, the description is vague with no specific tech stack or team, the same listing appears on aggregator sites but not on the company's own careers page, and the company shows no other signs of active hiring (no recent LinkedIn hires, no social media activity).
Are ghost jobs illegal?
In most places, not yet. Ontario passed legislation requiring disclosure of whether a posting is for an active vacancy. The U.S. has the TJAAA bill in Congress. Regulation is moving, but slowly.
Why don't job boards remove ghost jobs?
Because ghost jobs make them money. A fake listing generates the same page views, ad impressions, and engagement metrics as a real one. The platforms have no economic reason to clean them up.
