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Most of these applications have gone unacknowledged, although once a month Joseph is called in for an interview and unceremoniously ghosted afterwards. He subsides on a combination of freelance writing work and Universal Credit; to keep his benefits, he must attend regular appointments at his local Jobcentre. These are \u201ckind of useless, to be honest.\u201d Job coaches can only shrug their shoulders and provide the kind of advice already available online.<\/p>\n
A friend with a first-class Chinese degree corroborates. His appointed job coach \u201cfelt really bad for me. They said there was no reason I should be struggling to find a job, and they told me to just keep trying. And really that\u2019s all you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
He signed onto out-of-work benefits while applying for a mixture of grad schemes and minimum-wage jobs in central London. He\u2019s currently working part-time at a London supermarket and waiting to set off for a funded master\u2019s degree abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoads of jobs that I\u2019ve applied for say, \u2018you didn\u2019t get accepted,\u2019\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019ve still seen the same postings up five, six months later. You see it all the time, especially on LinkedIn. It makes you feel useless.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Big Four accounting firm outsourced his interview to an AI bot, before ultimately rejecting him. \u201cYou\u2019re on a webcam and you\u2019re looking on your screen at yourself,\u201d he explained. \u201cA question shows up and you have about five seconds to think. It\u2019s very uncanny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dermot, 22, recently graduated from his Computer Science BSc at the University of Liverpool and has been looking for a graduate software engineer role for around a year. \u201cMy experience has been quite demoralising,\u201d he said, \u201chaving next to no human contact. Applications typically include four or five stages\u2026 ghosting is incredibly common.\u201d<\/p>\n
While doing the rounds on huge job searching sites like Indeed, he regularly runs into opportunities he does not believe are real. \u201cGhost jobs\u201d, or postings without any corresponding vacancy, are a normal part of being unemployed in 2025. CVs and cover letters never get a reply; job ads get reposted at regular intervals. The employers who post these fake jobs have a myriad of motives, edging from the unethical to the illegal: keeping morale up among overworked employees in case they decide to quit; leading shareholders on; mining and selling candidate data.<\/p>\n
One company Dermot points to is registered at an address in Blackburn, and claims to \u201c[build] scalable digital platforms for clients across Europe.\u201d On its Indeed page there are eight active listings for hybrid internships. The briefs run the gamut from software development to graphic design to sales to HR to accounting. All are targeted at new graduates and promise a competitive minimum salary of \u00a338k, visa sponsorship, a \u201ccollaborative, mentor-led environment\u201d and a \u201cpath to [a] full-time position.\u201d<\/p>\n
An email to its listed address immediately bounces back, and its website returns a DNS error. The company\u2019s LinkedIn page lists 30 employees, all of whom live in Pakistan and actually seem to operate through the freelancing site Upwork. A look at Companies House reveals a previous attempt to register the business in the north of England, and a forcible dissolution a year later.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre these jobs real?\u201d I asked the company\u2019s director in a WhatsApp message.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, these jobs are real,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am still hiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked how he planned to cover the cost of eight graduates on salaries of \u00a338k each. He started vacillating.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell the jobs are real but we put things on hold as you can see the jobs were posted like 3 months ago\u2026\u201d he typed. \u201cWhen I said jobs are real it means I am still hiring but a bit of in different context. I am in talk with some investors and I probably lock in couple of weeks and if it happened, I would refresh the jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried to ask about his investors. He referred me instead to a 5 per cent stake he had \u201cjust locked\u201d in an American startup. After some more pushing, he eventually told me he would take the postings down. They disappeared from Indeed after a few days. But they were a drop in the ocean. \u201cThere\u2019s a large enough number [of these postings] to become noticeable,\u201d said Dermot, \u201cespecially with the decreasing number of graduate jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many serious jobseekers will attest that they have applied to some of these empty postings. But we have no idea how large the proportion of fake jobs actually is. The BBC, the Times, and multiple local and industry publications have all cited a 2023 study by the career readiness website StandoutCV. It contains some shocking statistics. Almost 60 per cent of veterinary nursing and 46.5 per cent of software engineering vacancies do not exist, it claims. Just over a quarter of advertised jobs in Islington never intended to hire anyone in the first place. But for \u201cghost jobs\u201d, the study simply substituted listings that had been live for over 30 days.<\/p>\n
The issues with this methodology are obvious. Employers are within their rights to spend over a month searching for the ideal candidate; several of my interviewees attested that it was not unusual to face rejection and see the same posting deleted and reposted in month-long stints. If you are looking for a job, there is no real way of gauging what is legitimate and what isn\u2019t. Searching for graduate openings will soon see you lost in the mire.<\/p>\n
Some are clearly fake. One LinkedIn search for computer science jobs yielded a WordPress developer position that had been left open for nine months, as well as two invitations to join the \u201ctalent pool\u201d of a web design company with a single employee and a total profit of \u00a32,618 in the previous tax year. You can sidestep this Russian Roulette by using your existing connections to tell you who is actually hiring, say the online experts. New graduates, who are entering the market for the first time, lose out again.<\/p>\n
The Online Safety Act makes some attempt to wipe out online scams. Large online service providers must use \u201cproportionate systems and processes designed to\u2026 prevent individuals from encountering\u2026 fraudulent advertisers.\u201d Online job boards are covered in this item, but in practice the onus mostly falls on the user. Indeed, one of the largest in the world, simply asks jobseekers to \u201creport suspected illegal content.\u201d Posting a job advert without a corresponding vacancy or budget is annoying, deceptive and a huge waste of people\u2019s time. But it is not illegal.<\/p>\n
Here we are falling behind. In the US, cybersecurity professional Eric Thompson is agitating for a bill he calls the TJAAA, or \u201cTruth in Job Advertising and Accountability Act\u201d. Companies posting job listings without a vacancy would receive fines; applicants would be allowed to pursue legal action against timewasting offenders. A similar bill on the state level passed through the California Assembly in July, and is pending approval from the state\u2019s Senate. Over here, the \u201cghost jobs\u201d phenomenon last came up in Hansard 11 years ago, in the context of the government\u2019s now-defunct Universal Jobsmatch system.<\/p>\n
There is no current proposal to make these phantom jobs illegal. But robust legislation would most likely save the state money in the long run. We are already using Universal Credit to fund graduates through layers of bureaucracy that may often be pointless. And one can only imagine the future cost of a resultant mental health crisis \u2013 look up and down the country and you will find young people suspended in states of helplessness, isolation and low confidence because they can\u2019t get jobs that don\u2019t exist. If Labour has any interest in tackling unemployment, they must start by tackling the detritus faced by the unemployed.<\/p>\n
Some names were changed in this article. <\/p>\n