This job market is trash. So, I applied to over a 100 jobs in one day. I have applied to over 200 jobs. A Berkeley professor says even his best students with 4.0 GPA are not getting job offers. Something weird is going on. People are applying to hundreds, sometimes thousands of jobs and hearing nothing back. No interviews, not even rejection calls. And it's not just bad luck or that they're underqualified. Some of these people have years of experience and master's degrees. It's because most of these jobs aren't real. They're called ghost jobs. Ghost job. Ghost job. Companies are deliberately posting fake job listings to collect resumes, look busy to investors, and even to keep workers from organizing. This is a systemwide scam to mislead millions. And today, we're exposing it. All right. So, first let's clearly define what exactly a ghost job is. Because it's not a scammer who's giving you a bad link to click on so he can hack into your computer. Instead, a ghost job is a job listing made by a real company with no real intention of actually filling that position. These are deliberate postings made by either an employee or some software the company uses to recruit. And these ghost jobs are everywhere. This new study found that one in five job listings are these ghost jobs. And what's crazy is that this number is probably a low estimate. Because if you look through the comments of some of these articles and Reddit forums, some job seekers think it's the vast majority of job listings that are fake. So why why would a company waste their time and money making all these fake job listings if they have no intention of actually filling the positions? Well, this company that helps with résumés and recruitment did a study last year to answer this question. They surveyed over 600 hiring managers and these are the real reasons why companies are making ghost jobs. The two biggest reasons kind of go hand in hand. Essentially, companies want to create an image for job seekers, competitors, and investors that they're growing, that business is booming. It doesn't matter whether the company is secretly losing money cuz hey look, they're hiring thousands of people so they must be doing good. But that creates false hope for job seekers and investors. Someone trying to get a job will look at these positions and think they'll get easily hired in this growing company only to waste their time applying for a fake job. And a small-time stock trader who wants to invest, thinking the company will grow in the future, could instead be investing in a collapsing company. Usually, if a company does something like this, this market manipulation, it becomes securities fraud, which is something that's been a crime in the US since 1934. But in all of my research for this episode, I couldn't find a single company that was found guilty of securities fraud because of these ghost jobs. yet. As this epidemic of fake job posting spreads, who knows, maybe this will be more enforced in the future. So, that's kind of the main reason why companies have ghost jobs. It's to create this image that the company is booming, even if it probably isn't. But before we get into what I think is probably the most insane reason why ghost jobs are made, I first want to mention another one from this survey, and that is that companies use ghost jobs to collect résumés for later use. So even if they're not looking to fill the position right now, they're still saving applicants info just in case they need to reach out in the future. I feel like this one isn't as bad. I feel like most job seekers know that their info is being saved somewhere. But what I think is my absolute favorite reason why ghost jobs are made is to make employees feel replaceable. If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. That is some really like truly dystopian stuff happening. These companies are straight up admitting to posting fake jobs just to make their workers feel like if they're not performing that someone else is right there ready to take their spot at any moment. That tactic seems very, very predatory. It's like these companies are dangling the carrot of better working conditions without ever actually delivering. If employees think they can be easily replaced unless they overwork, they're way less willing to take risks like asking for raises or organizing. It's actually kind of genius if you think about it, just in a really messed up way. With all these ghost jobs booming and being used to manipulate the market and the workplace, you'd think there'd be some law to ban these ghost jobs, right? Well, New Jersey senators just introduced a bill to ban employers from posting ghost jobs. If the bill passes, any employer that does so would be fined a whopping $5,000. But with lots of other issues taking the spotlight, I doubt this law will pass anytime soon. In the meantime, the best job seekers can do is to keep an eye out on ghost jobs. Here are some red flags to help you spot them. If the company has multiple identical listings, most of those are probably ghost jobs. or if the listings are on LinkedIn or Indeed but not on the company's website, those are also probably ghost jobs. The other thing to notice is if the job description is either way too vague or sounds too perfect, it's probably because it's not real. By the way, I also found this spreadsheet that some random user on Reddit made that tracks companies guilty of posting ghost jobs. So, if you're a job seeker and you see a company you applied for on this list, that job might have been fake. Now, this list isn't independently verified or anything, so definitely take it with a grain of salt, but if you do want to check it out, I did put it in the description with the rest of my sources. And while you're there, make sure to hit the subscribe button to support the show. The channel is growing and I have lots of things in store, so I would really appreciate the support. If you guys haven't had a chance to check out the last couple videos about the fake Etsy shops and the new breakthrough in artificial hearts, make sure to do so and share this video with any job seekers you think could benefit from it. All right, I think that's it. I will see you guys in the next one.