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Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

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  • Hunter Ng

Abstract

This study investigates the emerging phenomenon of "ghost hiring" or "ghost jobs", where employers advertise job openings without intending to fill them. Using a novel dataset from Glassdoor and employing a LLM-BERT technique, I find that up to 21% of job ads may be ghost jobs, and this is particularly prevalent in specialized industries and in larger firms. The trend could be due to the low marginal cost of posting additional job ads and to maintain a pipeline of talents. After adjusting for yearly trends, I find that ghost jobs can explain the recent disconnect in the Beveridge Curve in the past fifteen years. The results show that policy-makers should be aware of such a practice as it causes significant job fatigue and distorts market signals.

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  • Hunter Ng, 2024. "Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs," Papers 2410.21771, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2410.21771
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    2. Kim, Jonghwan (Simon) & Ra, Kyeongheum, 2022. "Employee satisfaction and asymmetric cost behavior: Evidence from Glassdoor," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    3. Martin Nienhaus, 2022. "Executive equity incentives and opportunistic manager behavior: new evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1276-1318, December.
    4. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
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