1 in 5 job listings are never filled 93% of HR professionals admit to posting ghost jobs 27% of US LinkedIn listings show ghost job patterns California now requires employers to disclose hiring intent The FTC has named deceptive job advertising a priority enforcement area 1 in 5 job listings are never filled 93% of HR professionals admit to posting ghost jobs 27% of US LinkedIn listings show ghost job patterns California now requires employers to disclose hiring intent The FTC has named deceptive job advertising a priority enforcement area
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AI-powered career infrastructure

Find Real
Jobs.
Expose
Fake Ones.

Run your job search from one dashboard.

The job market has a ghost job epidemic. Up to 1 in 5 listings posted online are either fake or never filled — wasting millions of hours of job seekers' time every year. GhostBust gives you the tools to search smarter, detect low-intent listings before you apply, and track every application in one place.

GHOSTBUST HAS SCANNED THOUSANDS OF JOB LISTINGS AND COUNTING.
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1 in 5
job listings online are either fake or never filled
93%
of HR professionals admit to posting ghost job listings
53%
of job seekers were ghosted by employers last year — a three-year high
The Problem

What Is a Ghost Job?

Definition — Congressional Research Service

"Online job postings for positions that do not exist, or that employers are not planning to fill immediately."

Source: Congressional Research Service, Official Research Arm of the United States Congress

Ghost jobs are not a fringe phenomenon or internet conspiracy. They are a documented, named practice that the US Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, California's legislature, and major hiring platforms have all formally recognised and acted on.

Companies post ghost jobs for a range of reasons: to appear to be growing during hiring freezes, to build a passive candidate pipeline, to satisfy internal headcount planning requirements, or simply by failing to remove filled or cancelled roles. The result is millions of wasted applications and a job market that feels more opaque and discouraging than it needs to be.

3x
less likely to hear back from a job application than in 2021
100–200+
applications the average job seeker sends before landing a single offer
27.4%
of all US job listings on LinkedIn show patterns consistent with ghost jobs — an independent analysis of LinkedIn's public listing data by ResumeUp.AI, not data published by LinkedIn itself

Ghost jobs are now a matter of public policy. Legislators at federal and state level have introduced or passed measures specifically targeting deceptive job posting practices.

FED
Truth in Job Advertising and Accountability Act (TJAAA) — federal bill requiring employers to disclose hiring intent, salary bands, and deadlines for removing stale listings. Enforcement through the Department of Labor and FTC. Read more ↗
FTC
FTC Joint Labor Task Force — FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson directed the agency to make deceptive job advertising a priority enforcement area in February 2025. Read more ↗
CA
California, March 2025 — all private employers must disclose whether a posting is for a vacancy actively being filled. Violations constitute unfair competition under state law. Read more ↗
NJ / KY
New Jersey and Kentucky have introduced similar legislation. Ontario, Canada has passed equivalent requirements effective January 2026. Read more ↗
Roadmap

Built In Public.

GhostBust ships fast and ships often. See what we've built, what we're building now, and where we're headed next.

View Roadmap →
Proof of Work

See It
For Yourself.

This is an actual job listing run through GhostBust's Ghost Detector. The listing was found on Indeed. The analysis below is real — not fabricated.

The listing as it appeared
Job listing screenshot 1 Job listing screenshot 2 Job listing screenshot 3
Job listing screenshot shown for educational and illustrative purposes under fair use. GhostBust is not affiliated with Beacon Talent or any employer shown in demo content.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer (AI Focus)
Confidential Client · Remote · Full Time
70
Ghost Score
⚠ SUSPICIOUS — PROCEED WITH CAUTION
45
Specificity
25
Transparency
15
Process
Detection Confidence85%

This listing shows several concerning patterns typical of ghost jobs, including vague company identity, generic role descriptions, and lack of concrete application process. While the technical requirements are detailed, the overall presentation suggests this may not be a genuine hiring opportunity.

Signals Detected
HIGH
Anonymous company identity — Company is only referred to as ‘the client’ with no actual company name provided.
HIGH
No application process mentioned — No instructions on how to apply, contact information, or next steps provided.
MED
Generic role description — Uses buzzword-heavy language and vague descriptions like ‘modern platform’ and ‘AI-powered search’.
MED
No location or compensation information — Missing basic job details that legitimate postings typically include.
LOW
Detailed technical stack — Provides specific technologies and tools which shows some legitimacy.
MED
Third-party posting format — Written as if posted by a recruiter or agency rather than the hiring company directly.
What to do next
01 Research the actual company name and verify this position exists on their official careers page.
02 Look for this same job posting across multiple platforms with different company names as a red flag.
03 Be cautious of any recruiter who contacts you about this role without providing clear company identification and application process.
GhostBust scores are algorithmic estimates based on patterns in listing language and structure — not verified facts about employer intent. This listing may represent a genuine open role. Always conduct your own research before making application decisions.
Contact

Get In Touch.

GhostBust is built for job seekers and we take every message seriously. Whether you have a question about how the Ghost Detector works, found a listing that scored wrong, want to report a ghost job you encountered, have a press or partnership inquiry, or just want to say hi — we want to hear from you.

Contact Us →
Founding Member Program

YOU'RE BUILDING THIS WITH US.

GhostBust is in its early stages — and that makes you one of the most important users we'll ever have. The data you contribute right now is the foundation everything else gets built on.

  • 01 You scan a listing. The AI reads the full text of any job posting and scores it against patterns that correlate with listings that never result in hires. Every scan you run adds a real data point to GhostBust's growing intelligence layer.
  • 02 You log the outcome. Applied and heard nothing? Got an interview? Got the job? Every outcome you record against a listing is stored in GhostBust's proprietary dataset — the first of its kind. Over time, this outcome data will directly inform how Ghost Scores are calculated.
  • 03 You use Career HQ. Upload your resume, run a full AI analysis, get a personalized job search strategy, or work through a career coaching session. Every interaction is informed by your history on the platform — and every session makes the advice more tailored to you specifically.
  • 04 The next job seeker wins. Every scan, every outcome, every career session you run makes the dataset richer. The job seekers who come after you will benefit from what you contributed — a smarter, more accurate picture of which listings are real and which are ghosts.
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Founding Member Status

Everyone who joins GhostBust now is a Founding Member. That's not a marketing label — it's a permanent record of who was here when the data was thin and the work was real. Your profile will carry the Founding Member badge indefinitely.

Pro Access, Free for Life

If you're a Founding Member, that means you helped to build this. You should benefit from it. As the GhostBust community grows larger, the window to claim Founding Member status will eventually close when GhostBust introduces membership tiers in the future. To reward these early contributors, all Founding Members will be immediately upgraded to the Pro tier for free.

JOIN FREE — CLAIM FOUNDING MEMBER STATUS →

Stop Firing Into
the Abyss.

GhostBust is free to use. No account required. Start finding real jobs and stop wasting applications on listings that were never meant to be filled.

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GhostBust
GHOSTBUST

The job market has a ghost problem.

Click to continue

THE JOB MARKET IS BROKEN.

A significant portion of job listings posted on major platforms today are never intended to result in a hire. They exist to collect resumes, satisfy compliance requirements, or maintain the appearance of growth — and they are structurally indistinguishable from legitimate postings. The burden of that asymmetry falls entirely on the job seeker.

FIND REAL JOBS. EXPOSE THE FAKE ONES.

GhostBust gives you two tools in one. Search across six major job boards simultaneously from a single interface, filtered by industry, role, location, and job type — no tab-switching, no repeated searches. Then paste any listing into the Ghost Detector and our AI scores it against the linguistic and structural patterns most commonly associated with postings that never result in hires — vague employer identity, missing application process, implausible requirement stacking, copy-pasted boilerplate. You get a Ghost Score, a full signal breakdown, and concrete next steps. In seconds.

70
Ghost Score
Suspicious
HIGH Anonymous company identity
MED No application process mentioned

YOUR ENTIRE JOB SEARCH. ONE PLACE.

Career HQ brings AI into every stage of your search. Get a full resume analysis with a strength score, gap identification, and rewritten bullets tailored to specific roles. Build a personalized job search strategy based on your resume, region, and target industry. Run a career coaching session that draws on your full platform history — past scans, prior analyses, logged outcomes. Every feature gets more tailored the more you use GhostBust. This is not a generic AI tool. It knows you.

YOU ARE NOT SEARCHING ALONE.

The GhostBust Community is where job seekers share what the algorithms won’t tell you — real experiences, regional intel, industry warnings, and wins. Post anonymously or publicly. Filter by region, industry, or topic. Follow the people whose insight you trust. The job market is opaque by design. The community exists to change that.

YOU’RE EARLY. THAT MATTERS.

GhostBust is building the first proprietary dataset of ghost job patterns — powered by real job seekers like you. Every scan you run and every outcome you log becomes a data point that sharpens the platform for everyone who comes after you. This is what it looks like to be part of something from the beginning.

EXPLORE GHOSTBUST