Fake Jobs running 20%

 You may have relegated your 12-foot skeleton back to the garage—and finally finished the leftovers from that Costco bag of fun-sized candies—but for job seekers,but for job seekers, it’s still spooky season out there. That’s because they’re still likely to encounter “ghost jobs,” positions that companies advertise with no intention of actually filling. Last year, as many as one out of every five listings job hunters came across online may have been phantom ones, according to a data analysis by hiring platform Greenhouse, which found that 18%–22% of jobs posted in 2024 didn’t result in a hire.

Companies may post the jobs in good faith, or they may do it to look like they’re growing. Still, Greenhouse co-founder Jon Stross told the Wall Street Journal, “The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.” But there may be some help on the way to try to save job candidates from writing unnecessary cover letters: Both Greenhouse and LinkedIn have introduced tags for listings they can confirm are real.