Unless you were living under a nice protective rock from corporate buzzwords, you’ve likely heard of the “Great Resignation,” the hot jobs market that began in 2021 as millions of Americans quit every month, trading up for something better. As some of these workers came to regret their decisions, quiet quitting entered the chat in 2022, a trend defined by some as doing the bare minimum at work and debunked by others as people just doing their job.
2023 brings news of the “ghost job,” the posting that is technically open but likely won’t ever get filled. It calls every bit of the 2020s job market narrative into question, exposing the uncertainty and lack of transparency in the economy and workforce.
If you’ve ever applied to a job only to hear back that the company isn’t actually hiring for the listing, you’ve likely come in contact with one of these phantom postings. Nearly a third (27%) of hiring managers admit to leaving job postings up for more than four months, per a survey from Clarify Capital of 1,000 hiring managers in the summer of 2022, as reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Te-Ping Chen.
The reasons are plenty: Ghost jobs give the impression that the company is doing better than it is, provide hiring managers with a pool of candidates to choose from when workers quit down the line, and (or) assuage employees who are overworked (without actually alleviating the workload).
But the ghost jobs also rock economists’ assumptions about the economy. The Great Resignation narrative took hold largely because of one economic indicator: The JOLTS, or Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which all of a sudden began showing huge jumps in job openings and quits in 2021. For 20 months, there were at least 10 million job openings. But if many of those job openings were ghosts all along, then the strength of the market becomes less of a statement and more of a question.
It’s enough to make a candidate think they’re losing touch with reality, or at least make them frustrated. To be fair, these ghost jobs are distorting reality, a smoke and mirror trick from companies that some workers think we’ve already seen enough of; some people have accused companies, especially those within the tech and finance sector, of forcing layoffs and slashing perks as a way to keep their workers in line and bring back the ways of the past. In a workplace already swirling with recession fears and forced office returns, these ghost jobs are only adding to worker dismay.
For the past two years, workers have held the upper hand, but as the economy created a tug of war between them and their bosses, they’ve been growing increasingly anxious. Last summer, about 80% of the U.S. workforce said they feared for their job security if a recession hit. Unemployment was (and still is) relatively low, but that didn’t keep nerves at bay. Layoffs that followed at companies like Twitter or Goldman Sachs added to the fear, but that doesn’t mean all is doom and gloom.
“While the layoff rates in many of these industries are high compared to other industries during that time period, many of these rates are actually low compared to pre-pandemic years,” Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab told Fortune’s Megan Leonhardt.
Still, though, anxiety over an uncertain job market isn’t deterring some workers from looking for what they want. Fueled by their need for well-paying jobs and better opportunities, a whopping majority (96%) of employees reported in a Monster.com survey that they’re looking for a new position this year in order to have better pay. Many Gen Zers are reportedly worried about a recession, but they still feel positively about the labor market.
In the end, many job seekers are saying “boo” to these ghost jobs. But that doesn’t stop these fake listings from being a worker hassle that needs to be busted. Someone call Bill Murray.
