Ghost Job Statistics 2026: How Many Job Listings Are Fake?

What percentage of job listings are ghost jobs?

Between 18% and 27% of online job listings in 2026 are ghost jobs — positions that are posted publicly but that employers have no real intention of filling, at least not from that posting, at least not any time soon. That range comes from multiple converging studies by Greenhouse, ResumeBuilder, and Clarify Capital conducted across 2024–2025. It is the single most important number a job seeker can internalize before they open a new tab and start applying: roughly one in four listings is not a real, fillable opening.

This page is the ghost job statistics 2026 reference hub — citation-grade, every figure sourced. For tactical guidance on spotting ghost listings in the wild, see how to identify a ghost job.

Key Statistics at a Glance: How Many Ghost Jobs Are There?

Between 18% and 27% of online job listings are ghost jobs — Multiple converging studies (Greenhouse, ResumeBuilder, Clarify Capital), 2024–2025.
81% of recruiters admit to posting positions with no intent to fill — Clarify Capital survey, January 2025.
40% of companies posted at least one fake listing in the past year — ResumeBuilder survey of 1,600 hiring managers, 2024.
In tech, 40% of companies posted fake jobs, and 79% of those listings were still active at the time of analysis — ResumeUp.AI LinkedIn analysis, 2025.
45% of HR professionals post ghost jobs "regularly"; another 48% post them "occasionally" — Survey data, 2025.
Companies with 1,001–5,000 employees are the worst offenders, with ghost jobs reaching roughly 25% of their postings, especially in tech — Industry analysis, 2025.
The Congressional Research Service published formal analysis of the ghost-job phenomenon (report IF12977) — CRS, 2024.
Ghost-job disclosure legislation is pending in New Jersey, California, and Kentucky; Ontario has enacted disclosure requirements taking effect in 2026 — Legislative tracking, 2025–2026.
A Change.org petition demanding action on ghost jobs has crossed roughly 50,000 signatures — Change.org, as of February 2026.

That is the headline block. The rest of this page breaks it down.

Ghost Job Prevalence by Industry

The strongest industry-specific data is in tech, where the practice is both widespread and well-documented.

In tech, 40% of companies posted fake jobs in the past year — ResumeUp.AI LinkedIn analysis, 2025.
79% of the tech ghost-job listings identified on LinkedIn were still active at the time of analysis — ResumeUp.AI LinkedIn analysis, 2025. This is the stat that matters most for job seekers: these postings do not expire quietly. They stay up, collecting applications, month after month.
Tech ghost-job motivations include building talent pools, monitoring specialist availability, and benchmarking salaries — Industry analysis, 2025.

For non-tech verticals — healthcare, finance, government, retail, logistics, education — data limited for this category. Verified ghost-job prevalence breakouts for those sectors are not yet captured in the source dataset behind this page. Updates forthcoming as new surveys surface.

One adjacent figure worth flagging because it routinely confuses the industry-level picture: the Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS "7 million job openings" figure is inflated by cross-platform duplicates — true unique openings are lower (BLS JOLTS data plus industry analysis). Ghost jobs are a distinct phenomenon from duplicate job postings, but both push the nominal listing count above the real hiring count. Any honest answer to "how many listings are fake?" has to acknowledge both.

Ghost Job Prevalence by Platform

The only named per-platform figure currently verified is from LinkedIn.

On LinkedIn, 79% of the tech ghost-job listings identified in a 2025 analysis were still active at the time of the study — ResumeUp.AI LinkedIn analysis, 2025.

For Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Monster, and company ATS pages (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS), data limited for this category — updates forthcoming. The platforms themselves do not publish ghost-job audit data, and third-party audits have so far concentrated on LinkedIn because of its public-posting model.

For a broader treatment of duplication, cross-posting, and distribution effects on listing counts, see the forthcoming ghost job statistics section of the US Job Market 2026 Report.

Why Companies Post Ghost Jobs

The blunt number first: 81% of recruiters admit to posting positions with no intent to fill (Clarify Capital survey, January 2025). That is not a rounding error or a misread — eight in ten practitioners said yes to the question. The motivations vary, and not all of them are malicious. Six commonly cited reasons:

Building talent pools. Collecting resumes for roles the company may open later — documented specifically in tech. (Industry analysis, 2025.)
Monitoring specialist availability. Testing what senior talent is on the market right now without committing to a requisition. (Industry analysis, 2025.)
Benchmarking salaries. Using applicant expectations to calibrate internal pay bands. (Industry analysis, 2025.)
Signaling growth. Appearing to hire so investors, customers, and employees perceive expansion.
Keeping pipelines warm. Maintaining a steady flow of candidates in case a real requisition opens.
Quiet replacement. Screening potential replacements for an underperforming incumbent who has not yet been terminated.

Reasons 1–3 are directly supported by the dataset used for this page. Reasons 4–6 are widely reported in industry coverage; data limited for specific percentage breakdowns — updates forthcoming as the Clarify Capital motivation breakdown and comparable surveys are re-verified.

The common thread: a ghost job costs the company almost nothing to post, and carries no disclosure obligation in most jurisdictions. Once posted, it simply accumulates days on market while real candidates send in real applications. The cost lands entirely on the applicant.

Legislative and Regulatory Response

Ghost jobs have finally crossed the threshold from annoyance to policy concern.

The Congressional Research Service published formal analysis in 2024 (report IF12977) — CRS, 2024. A CRS report does not itself make law, but it is the research arm Congress uses when a topic becomes live. The existence of IF12977 is the clearest signal yet that federal-level attention is here.
Disclosure-focused legislation is pending in New Jersey, California, and Kentucky — Legislative tracking, 2025–2026. Bill numbers, sponsors, and effective-date details are not yet fully itemized in the source dataset — data limited at that level of specificity, updates forthcoming.
Ontario has enacted ghost-job disclosure requirements taking effect in 2026 — Legislative tracking, 2025–2026. Ontario is the first major North American jurisdiction to move from debate to statute. Statute name, scope, and enforcement mechanism are not yet fully captured here — updates forthcoming.
A Change.org petition demanding action on ghost jobs has crossed roughly 50,000 signatures as of February 2026 — Change.org. Petitions are a lagging indicator of political salience, not a leading one, but 50,000 signatures is the kind of number legislative staff notice.

Expect this section to grow. The direction of travel — mandatory disclosure of whether a posting corresponds to a real, budgeted, open requisition — is consistent across every active proposal I am tracking.

What This Means for Job Seekers

Three takeaways.

One: recalibrate the denominator. When you see 200 open roles that match your profile on a given platform, mentally multiply by roughly 0.75 before you plan your week. Between 18% and 27% of listings are ghost jobs (Multiple converging studies, 2024–2025). A quarter of what you are looking at is not real opportunity. This is not a reason to apply less — it is a reason to allocate more attention to the listings most likely to be real.

Two: freshness and signal matter more than volume. Stale ghost listings stay up for months. 79% of the tech ghost-job listings identified on LinkedIn were still active at the time of analysis (ResumeUp.AI LinkedIn analysis, 2025). Listing age, company hiring velocity, and whether anyone from the employer is actively engaging with applicants are better signals than keyword match alone. See how to identify a ghost job for the tactical checklist.

Three: the downstream cost is real even if it is not yet directly measured. No statistic in the current dataset quantifies wasted hours or dollars specifically attributable to ghost jobs, but the backdrop is grim: 72% of job seekers say the process has harmed their mental health (Resume Genius Job Search Mental Health Survey), the typical professional search runs 100–200+ applications for one offer (Multiple sources converging, 2024–2025) over an average of 5–6 months (BLS/industry estimates, 2024–2025). For a breakdown of how much time applications cost, see the dedicated analysis. Every ghost job in that pipeline is a resume sent into a void for a reason the applicant will never learn.

I built JobIntel specifically to score listings on whether they show the signals of a real, fillable role — hiring velocity, posting age, company activity, cross-platform corroboration — so applicants can spend their hours on the 75% that are actually worth applying to.

Methodology Note

Every bolded statistic on this page — the fake job posting statistics, the legislative signals, the job-seeker context figures — traces to an entry in my internal research/data-points.md file, which is the master citation register for JobIntel content. Figures sourced from third-party surveys (Greenhouse, ResumeBuilder, Clarify Capital, ResumeUp.AI, Resume Genius, CareerPlug, Glassdoor, LinkedIn Talent Insights) retain their original attribution. Where the data-points register does not yet contain a verified figure for a section — certain non-tech industries, most individual platforms, sub-statute legislative detail, and ghost-job-attributable cost metrics — the page says so explicitly rather than estimating. Sections marked "data limited for this category — updates forthcoming" will be revised as verified entries are added. Corrections welcome.

This page — the ghost job statistics 2026 register I maintain — is updated as new figures clear verification. Citation-grade claims only.

Sources

Greenhouse — job listing activity analyses, 2024–2025.
ResumeBuilder — survey of 1,600 hiring managers, 2024.
Clarify Capital — recruiter survey, January 2025.
ResumeUp.AI — LinkedIn tech ghost-job analysis, 2025.
HR professional surveys on ghost-job posting frequency, 2025.
Industry analysis on employer-size distribution of ghost jobs, 2025.
Congressional Research Service — report IF12977, 2024.
Legislative tracking for New Jersey, California, Kentucky, and Ontario, 2025–2026.
Change.org — ghost-jobs petition signature count, February 2026.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — JOLTS data on job openings.
Resume Genius — Job Search Mental Health Survey.
CareerPlug — recruiting metrics, 2024.
Glassdoor — 2026 Job Seeker Sentiment Survey.
LinkedIn Talent Insights — candidate application timing studies.

All figures are maintained in the JobIntel research/data-points.md register. Corrections and additional verified sources are welcome.