“But at the same time I don’t think, when you look at the sort of recent evolution of labour market data, that you can completely rule them out as a partial factor.”
COVID-19 spurred an increase in the proportion of vacant jobs, Borland said, which has been decreasing “rather slowly” since then, with the proportion of vacant jobs considerably above where it was before COVID-19.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the proportion of vacant jobs was about 1.5 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistic data. That figure surged to 3 per cent in the middle of 2022, as lockdowns and supply disruptions drove up demand for workers.
However, since the lockdowns have passed, the proportion of vacant jobs has remained higher at 2.1 per cent, according to ABS data.
In February, the Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) internet vacancy index showed 31 per cent more advertisements in the labour market than compared with the monthly average for 2019. It eased further to about 20 per cent in March.
Professor Jeff Borland Department of Economics says ghost jobs cannot be ruled out.Credit: Fairfax Media
In a statement, JSA explained the surge in job ads by pointing to a “tighter overall labour market” with strong job growth and an unemployment rate well below the 2019 levels.
And the RBA has cited strong job growth as one of the reasons for maintaining the cash rate at 4.35 per cent from late 2023 to February. In a bulletin released in April last year, the RBA said that “any single indicator tends to provide a partial view of the labour market and the level of each indicator that is consistent with full employment can change over time as the structure of the economy evolves.”
This lack of clarity suggests that the online fakery common on social media may now be creeping into the job market.
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Edith Cowan University adjunct professor of business Ben Hamer said identifying “a verified ghost job ad” is difficult “because by its very nature, the company advertising it wants to give the impression it is being actively recruited for”.
He points to the numbers of conversations on social media of people comparing notes, and even drawing up lists, of ghost advertisers.
The impact on data remains unclear. Melbourne University’s Borland asks why ghost jobs weren’t a significant issue in Australia before the pandemic if they were merely the result of fake job listings.
Nevertheless, if hard data on job demand is increasingly diluted with postings for non-existent work, the false information may have an effect.
In the US last year, after a voter brought the issue of ghost jobs to his attention, Congressman Keith Self raised the issue of economic impact with the US Department of Labour. “How do ghost job postings affect the accuracy of unemployment figures and other labour market indicators?” he asked.
While the overall number of ghost job ads is difficult to measure, the definition of a ghost job isn’t clear, either.
Hunter Ng, of City University of New York, in a paper on the trend in the US, posits three motivations for posting ads for non-existent jobs: human resource departments seeking to get around long hiring times for specialised jobs; companies trying to understand the state of the candidate market, and “productivity theatre” – essentially, a way for the HR departments to look efficient.
CV-building service MyPerfectResume, which polled 753 recruiters on the trend through its site, puts forward a more colourful motivation behind why they advertise non-existent jobs.
A common reason for posting ghost job ads was to “maintain a presence on job boards even when we aren’t hiring”, recruiters said.
Other motives stated by the recruiters were to build a talent pool for the future, gain insights into the job market, and try to learn how hard it would be to replace a particular employee – which can be read as a kind of psychological warfare against that employee.
Whether it’s for making a company look “viable during a hiring freeze”, to raise its online profile or improve its reputation, a ghost job ad is a legitimate advertisement: but one aimed at the said company’s competitors, the market, media or the public. The only constituent it doesn’t cater to is prospective employees.
Without knowing the full extent of the phenomenon in our job market, it’s very difficult to know just how big a distortion these fake job ads are delivering to our economy.Credit: Getty
Another reason often put forward to justify these ads is downright Pavlovian and cheeky. The fake job ads are there to “assess the effectiveness” of “job descriptions”. Productivity theatre, indeed.
With online job sites offering free posting, the dynamics of job search are changing. ACU’s Mariappanadar says ghost jobs put “businesses in a commanding position” with relation to hiring.
From a business perspective, employers see certain service sector jobs as very dynamic, Mariappanadar says, so they are moving towards competency-based job descriptions which can change.
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So that’s why employers are “trying to keep [the ad] open”, according to Mariappanadar, in effect to cast a wider net and always have the whip hand during the hiring process.
ANU professor Alison Booth said that companies would risk building up a pool of out-of-date candidate resumes by keeping the same ad up for extended periods of time. So if companies are posting ads for jobs that don’t exist, a “much more plausible” motive would be the desire for the company “to look dynamic” in the marketplace.
And like Borland, Booth warns that without knowing the full extent of the phenomenon in our job market, it’s very difficult to know just how big a distortion these fake job ads are delivering to our economy.
