Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) pressed the Trump administration on Thursday to crack down on companies that post online listings for jobs that don’t exist. In letters to the Department of Labor and Federal Trade Commission, Gallego asked the agencies to investigate how widespread “ghost jobs” are, explain how they show up in federal labor data, and spell out what enforcement tools they can use to curb deceptive job ads. He also questioned whether policymakers can still rely on official data to evaluate the labor market if the government considers ghost jobs as real vacancies.
“Job postings that employers have no intent to fill, or ghost jobs, are becoming increasingly common and are wasting young Americans’ valuable time and energy,” Gallego told Fortune. “We need more information about the extent of this problem and what, if anything, is being done to address it.”
Still, Gallego shared those same worries over AI’s impact on the workforce.
“The use of artificial intelligence (AI) by online hiring platforms has also led to the increase in ghost jobs as employers can easily advertise an opening, allowing companies to recruit less actively and leave job postings open for long periods of time,” Gallego asserted in his letters.
