Why Do Companies Post Fake Job Listings?

45% of HR professionals say they regularly post job listings with no immediate intent to hire, according to a LiveCareer survey of 918 HR professionals. A further 48% do it occasionally. That means 93% of HR professionals participate in the practice at some frequency. The listings are real. The hiring intent is not.

These are called ghost jobs. The BLS JOLTS data makes the scale visible: in February 2026, US employers reported 6.9 million job openings but made only 4.8 million actual hires. The 2.1 million gap between openings and hires represents positions that existed on job boards without any genuine near-term hiring activity behind them.

The five reasons companies do it

According to Clarify Capital's February 2026 analysis of 176,268 active Indeed listings across 49 industries, companies maintain ghost listings for five documented reasons:

1. Pipeline building: accumulating resumes for roles they anticipate needing in three to six months, cited by 50% of hiring managers as the primary reason
2. Market signalling: projecting growth and momentum to investors, competitors, and the market without committing to actual headcount
3. Approved but unbudgeted roles: positions that received organisational sign-off in principle but have no confirmed budget to fill them
4. Always open posture: maintaining permanent listings for high-turnover roles even when no current vacancy exists
5. Compliance requirements: government and public sector roles legally required to be posted externally before an internal promotion or transfer can be finalised, accounting for an estimated 60% ghost job rate in government listings