"Ghost jobs" — job openings posted on boards such as LinkedIn and Indeed without any real intention of filling them right away — have grown so widespread that lawmakers in multiple U.S. states are now moving to ban or rein in the practice, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

State legislatures take action

In New York, legislators have passed a bill in both houses of the state legislature that would require companies to list on job ads the timeline on which they expect to hire a candidate — or face fines. Governor Kathy Hochul is expected to review the measure once it reaches her desk. If signed, New York's law would be among the first in the country to require hiring timelines on job postings.

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Jim Prokopiak introduced a bill in March that, if made law, would require employers to state their hiring intentions and provide a timeline for when job listings will be removed after a position is filled. Kentucky, New Jersey and California are considering similar solutions.

"When people are putting the time and effort into applying, there's a reasonable expectation that there is a job out there," Prokopiak told the Wall Street Journal.

The state-level push follows a playbook lawmakers have already run with job postings: jurisdictions including Colorado, California, Washington and New York now require employers to disclose salary ranges in ads. After Colorado's first-in-the-nation salary-disclosure law took effect in 2021, some employers responded by excluding the state from remote listings to avoid the requirement, prompting Colorado regulators to tighten their guidance. No federal law specifically addresses ghost listings, leaving the response to state legislatures — and, in Texas, to the state attorney general.

Job boards themselves are also in the crosshairs. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton opened an investigation into LinkedIn in July 2026, saying the platform has advertised and profited from fake job ads. LinkedIn has defended its practices, telling the Wall Street Journal that its policies require that posted jobs be "authentic and accurately represented."

How prevalent are ghost jobs?

In short: very — and they have been for a while. Forty percent of companies surveyed by career site Resume Builder in 2024 said they had posted a fake job listing that year. In many cases, hiring managers were behind the postings and argued that they were beneficial for business; those same managers said posting fake jobs is "morally acceptable."

For companies, ghost listings can serve as a way to collect résumés and even to hire a candidate who is too good to pass up. Critics, however, argue the practice benefits companies by portraying a false sense of growth and calm to investors and current employees — and could lead jobseekers to lose trust in a company altogether.

The Wall Street Journal also pointed to recent data from Greenhouse, a widely used hiring-software platform, which found — after analyzing its clients' job postings — that 19% of jobs advertised in the second quarter of 2026 showed no meaningful hiring activity after receiving applications. That includes reviewing job-test submissions or scheduling interviews.

That does not mean those jobs were inherently "ghost jobs," but it does indicate how often a job search can remain stagnant — sometimes for reasons outside a recruiter's or hiring manager's control. Budgets may have changed at the eleventh hour, for instance, or the company may be reviewing internal candidates.

The toll on jobseekers

In some ways, ghost jobs are so prevalent because of how impersonal the online job-hunting process has become. It is a familiar cycle for anyone who has spent time looking for work in the past couple of years: you find an opening you believe you are qualified for, customize your résumé and cover letter to fit the job description, hit submit — and hope for the best. Then you wait, but nothing happens, not even a rejection email. Weeks or even months later, you see the same job posted again.

Heather Sanford, a 44-year-old marketing professional and active jobseeker, is currently living that reality. She told the Wall Street Journal that she has applied to more than 3,000 jobs since her last contract role ended in May 2025. She checks LinkedIn and other job boards regularly and applies to anything in her field, or in fields where her skills would be a good fit. In many cases, she does not get a response — and then sees the same job post show up again.

"If you've posted a job and you have 500 applicants, are you telling me not one or two or three are qualified?" she said. "Are you looking for a unicorn? Or is it not a real job?"

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title "40% of companies posted fake job listings in 2024 — now lawmakers in multiple states are moving to ban them," and is distributed via Yahoo Finance.