What's haunting the job search this Halloween, and what the Workforce Index can and can't see
- By Jeremy Warren, Director of Impact
If you've been job hunting this year, you may know the feeling: you apply, you wait, and you never hear back. Sometimes that's a busy hiring manager. But sometimes the job was never really there.
"Ghost jobs" are postings for roles an employer isn't actively trying to fill. They've become one of the most talked-about frustrations in the job search, and for good reason. When you're one of the many people in our region looking for work after a layoff, every application takes time and hope.
How common are they?
It depends on who's counting, and how. The best data we've found puts it at roughly one in five postings. Hiring software company Greenhouse reported in 2024 that in any given quarter, 18 to 22 percent of jobs posted on its platform are ghost jobs.
You may have seen other numbers that come from surveys of employers. In a Clarify Capital survey of 1,000 U.S. employers, for example, one in five said they intentionally leave roles unfilled to reduce costs while appearing to be hiring.
Why would an employer post a job that isn't real?
Most ghost jobs aren't sinister. Common reasons include:
Building a pipeline: collecting resumes for roles that might open later
Signaling growth: looking busy to investors, customers, or competitors
Internal hires: posting a role that's already promised to an internal candidate
Plain neglect: forgetting to take down a listing after the job is filled
What the Workforce Index does about it
Every month, the Workforce Index tracks job postings in King County using data from Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm. One of the most important choices we make is to report unique postings rather than total postings.
Here's why. The same job often shows up on many sites at once: the company's careers page, LinkedIn, Indeed, and a handful of aggregators. Counted naively, one opening can look like five or six. Lightcast, our data provider, reduces multiple postings that list the same job at the same company in the same region to one unique posting. In August and September, that meant 88,307 total postings in King County came down to 35,662 unique postings, or about two and a half listings for every actual opening.
The Index also tracks median posting duration, or how long a typical listing stays up. Over the same period in King County, it was 11 days. A posting that stays open far longer than that is worth a second look.
What we can't see
Unique postings keep phantom jobs from multiplying in the data. They can't tell us whether a single posting is real. A ghost job posted once still counts once.
That's why we treat postings as one signal among several. The Index pairs them with unemployment data, layoff notices, and wages, and we describe what we see rather than predict what's coming.
What's changing
Lawmakers have noticed. In June, New York's legislature passed a bill requiring larger employers to say whether a posted role is expected to be filled within 90 days or is simply collecting resumes. It hasn't been signed into law. New Jersey and California have considered similar measures.
If you're job hunting now
A few signs a posting may not be what it seems:
It's been open much longer than the typical 11 days, or keeps reappearing
The description is vague about duties, team, or start date
There's no pay range. In Washington, most employers with 15 or more employees are required to include one.
You don't have to navigate this alone. WorkSource Seattle-King County offers free help with job search strategy, resumes, and connections to employers who are actually hiring.
Jeremy Warren is Director of Impact at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, where he leads the Workforce Index.