Worker Petitions To Abolish ‘Ghost Jobs’ After Applying To Over 1000 Openings And Only Hearing Back From 22
Canada has already made a law to tackle the problem of ghost jobs.
fizkes | Getty Images | Canva Pro If you've been in the job market any time in the past few years, you've likely encountered scores of so-called "ghost jobs" without even knowing it. Tons of the job postings we see online are, in fact, nothing more than fake postings designed to collect resumes or, more often, to give a company the illusion of growth.
It's a huge part of why workers today spend inordinate amounts of time applying to jobs and never hear anything back. And after a job search that became downright farcical, one worker has had enough and is proposing that the practice actually be outlawed.
A worker is petitioning to get 'ghost jobs' banned after applying to 1,000 jobs and only getting 22 responses.
Ghost jobs are a huge problem all over the world, with one 2024 study finding that 40% of companies have engaged in the practice, and many have even begun conducting fake interviews as well. Another survey found that 81% of recruiters admit to posting fake job ads, suggesting that rate could be a vast undercount.
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Unsurprisingly, the United States has the worst ghost job problem of all: A recent study found that 27.4% of American job ads on LinkedIn are fake, more than any other comparable country where the practice is a problem, like Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
Eric Thompson recently came up against this bizarre and unethical situation in his own job search. In an email, he shared that since being laid off last year, he has applied to more than 1,000 job openings. "Only 22 companies ever got back to me," he wrote. That's a response rate of .02%.
Being in his 50s, Thompson initially assumed he was a victim of ageism. "But after some research, I learned that most of these jobs didn’t even exist," he wrote, and it left him so angry he started a petition to have the practice banned.
The worker is proposing legislation to outlaw 'ghost jobs' in the United States.
"Ghost jobs waste time, drain savings, and erode trust," Thompson wrote in his petition on Change.org. "They push people to pay for premium subscriptions and resume rewrites while their applications vanish into a black hole."
Perhaps worse still, Thompson pointed out that this also constitutes a privacy and data security issue. "Resumes get stockpiled, sold, or retained without clear limits," he wrote. Yes, your resume gets sold just like the rest of your data, and in today's world, it is likely used to train AI models without your consent.
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Thompson is proposing legislation he calls The Truth in Job Advertising & Accountability Act, or TJAAA. Among its proposed provisions are a full ban on fake job openings, a requirement for transparency about pay and remote vs in-office schemes, and disclosures about AI use in hiring.
He also proposes privacy protections that would permit resumes to be used only for the position an applicant has applied for, and that "meaningful penalties" be applied to enforce what he calls "common sense" rules under which "honest employers already operate."
Other countries, like Canada, have begun banning 'ghost jobs.'
Thompson's idea may sound like pie in the sky, especially given the current administration in charge of our government, which isn't exactly interested in doing… well, much of anything at the moment. But there is precedent for his proposal.
In Canada, the province of Ontario has begun a large-scale crackdown on "ghost jobs," in part because the provincial government found this form of job fraud had cost Ontario millions of dollars in 2024.
“We want these ads pulled. We want to protect the workers of Ontario," David Piccini, Ontario's Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, said earlier this year. Among the proposals is establishing a clear and simple way for workers to report employers for deceptive practices and scam postings.
As Thompson put it in his petition, our current job market "rewards quantity over honesty — and workers pay the price." Here's hoping that, like in Canada, state governments in the U.S. will heed Thompson's petition ideas. This absurd situation has gone entirely too far and is likely to get worse unless governments do something about it.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
