A participant holds a flyer that reads “Join Our Team” during the Best Hire Chicago Career Fair in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Thursday, August 7, 2025.
Jim Vondruska | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Judging by the current data, you might think that there is literally a job for everyone who wants one. However, a closer look under the hood reveals a different story.
The number of job vacancies reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for years shows that there are at least as many job vacancies as there are unemployed workers.
But a comparison of the open positions with the actual new hires shows that not all positions have been filled.
In fact, not even close: Since the start of 2024, job openings have outpaced new hires by more than 2.2 million per month, BLS data shows. This points to an ongoing problem with “ghost jobs” that never seem to get filled.
“The U.S. job market looks deceptively strong on paper. Millions of job openings suggest opportunity, but many are illusions,” said Jasmine Escalera, career expert at MyPerfectResume, a job search platform that released a report this week on the “ghost job economy.” “The ghost job economy increases hope, wastes job seekers’ time, and muddies the data.” [that] Policymakers rely on it to manage the economy.
The number of job vacancies has generally been declining since peaking at over 12 million in March 2022, when the number of job openings outnumbered available workers by more than 2 to 1. In August, the latest month for which data is available due to the government shutdown, there were more than 7.2 million total job vacancies, while new hires were just 5.1 million. The ratio of vacancies to workers was roughly balanced.
Of course, the picture is not as simple as comparing the two numbers.
The number of job postings represents the total number of jobs, while the number of new hires represents the flow of people hired in a given month. A position can therefore be advertised for several months without being filled. However, this does not necessarily mean that the companies advertising these positions have no intention of hiring someone.
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Additionally, some companies post job openings solely to maintain an inventory of potential workers for positions that may open in the future.
Finally, the ratio of job openings to new hires has fallen in recent years from 1.8 to 1 at the peak of the job opening cycle to the current level of about 1.4 to 1, suggesting that there are fewer “ghost jobs.”
One issue impacting the divide: the changing labor supply as the U.S. has tightened its immigration standards.
Small business owners are reporting the most difficult time filling open positions since the Covid pandemic, while pointing out that 88% of job applicants lack the necessary skills, according to a report from the National Federation of Independent Business on Tuesday.
However, the problem has received greater attention in recent months as the labor market situation has weakened and the number of new hires has fallen significantly. At the same time, due to the shutdown in Washington, DC, no official government data is available
Job seekers are frustrated that they cannot find a new job. Mobility has slowed, with the “churn rate” falling by more than 30% compared to the peak of vacancies in March 2022, during the so-called “Great Resignation”.
A Change.org petition to crack down on companies offering ghost jobs has garnered nearly 50,000 signatures.
There are real implications at the policy level: Federal Reserve officials are closely watching BLS job openings numbers for clues about how tight the labor market is, so their vision is clouded by unreliable data.
“For job seekers, it means wasted time. For policymakers, it means distorted data. For employers, it poses serious credibility problems,” Escalera said. “Until job postings more accurately reflect actual hiring, workers will continue to look for jobs that don’t exist and confidence in the labor market will erode.”
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