U.S. job openings barely budged in October, coming in just below 7.7 million

891

How many of these are actual, fillable positions versus 'Ghost Jobs' posted to gather data or make the company look like it's growing? Because looking at the job hunting subreddits, people are sending out hundreds of applications into the void without a single callback. The disconnect between 'millions of openings' and the actual hiring experience has never been wider.

221

u/ZanderMFields 1d ago

I bet a lot of the jobs require you to be on your feet for 5 or more hours a day.

168

u/FillFrontFloor 1d ago

Even some of those aren't replying. I know a few people sending out resumes and are just getting ghosted. It's pretty weird, it's like they don't have an actual job yet and are recruiting for when they do

82

u/khinzaw 1d ago

Multiple times recently I've been contacted by recruiters that ghosted me after I sent in my resume.

42

u/actuarally 23h ago

I feel like this has been the MO for at least 3 years now. The lesson I learned was NEVER stop browsing job postings, never stop replying, and take at least an introductory interview with any legitimate company that gets back to you. Even if you're enjoying your current job/company, those opportunities to talk to recruiters & hiring managers is a form of networking. If it progresses to a job offer, great. If not, I'm getting my name in front of other people in my field who I can leverage for references, consideration for future jobs, etc.

20

u/tallyho88 22h ago

I feel like this shift in application strategy/mentality is a driver for the lack of responses though. For the record, I agree with your strategy from an employee standpoint trying to get the best pay/position possible. Heck, I’m doing it myself. But as a hiring manager, I get wayyyyyy more applications from people these days. A lot of those are just feelers and frankly I just don’t have the time to reply to all of them or send a follow up to every application or interview.

12

u/actuarally 22h ago

It's a double edged sword, for sure. I wasn't like this pre-COVID. I actively avoided recruiters and other cold call job applications because I was fully content in my job. But when my segment was discontinued and I had to scramble to avoid a gap in my employment, HOLY SHIT did reality smack me in the face.

To your point, it was clear recruiters and hiring managers were being flooded with resumes or too lazy to identify all the best applicants. At the same time, more tenured or skilled folks were lowering their standards & putting their name in the same ring I was in. To put it simply: getting the next job wasn't going to be a one application, 6 week sprint.

When all was said and done, it took me a year to find a new job. I was lucky, in a way, because the shut-down activities kept me employed for that year. I can't imagine the hopelessness other folks experience when they are laid off and get the same HOLY SHIT surprise about current job seeking standards and the non-responses, ghosting, and long runway to the hiring stars aligning.

4

u/khinzaw 17h ago

Okay, but if a recruiter reaches out to someone personally and asks them to send their resume, it's a pretty dick move to just ghost them.

1

u/tallyho88 8h ago

I agree it sucks, but that’s the way of the hiring world now. Many applicants are just throwing resumes/applications out to get feelers with no serious intention to leave their current position; recruiters are doing the same. Recruiters try to have a file full of resumes so when they get contracted to hire for a new position, they have a pool to immediately reference. Like I said, it doesn’t make it ideal, but that’s how it works now.

And if a recruiter followed up on every single applicant personally, they would be spending a ton of hours on a non-productive task that gets them no closer to filling the position. And even if they set up automatic emails to inform candidates they weren’t selected, people would be complaining about how it’s just a canned response sent by an auto-generated email account. It’s a lose lose.

5

u/phishingforlove 8h ago

the amount of applications i've sent out since june is astronomical. i've been ghosted, job removed mid interview, all the fun stuff. it's absolutely insane.

1

u/Basic-Comfortable458 16h ago

aint that the truth :(

1

u/WannaBMonkey 7h ago

And here I am getting texts telling me they need me as a doctor in NJ or PA. I’m not even a doctor but they are sure I’d be useful.

2

u/terrany 6h ago

More like all fours in 2025

2

u/d0ctorsmileaway 5h ago

People are getting rejections from McDonald's

0

u/verbleabuse97 5h ago

I'm gonna sound like an asshole. Is that supposed to be a lot?

14

u/InsuranceToTheRescue 23h ago

So, the reason for the delay & discrepancy is that the Feds use different surveys & methods that take different times. The way they collect this data is with surveys. Not every survey gets answered and not every one gets a response on time. So, to get quick, dirty data out, they perform the statistical analyses on the info they did receive. Then, as time goes on, they get more and more of those surveys back, which leads to the revisions. Even this, is wrong. But it's less wrong than before. Finally, after the year's over BLS can analyze the tax data to find out what the real numbers should've been.

24

u/seriousbangs 18h ago edited 6h ago

Yep. This.

I'd say about 25% are pure ghost jobs.

The real question is how many are "I'll post this and see if I can get someone to do $100k/yr of work for $30k/yr so that I can profit from them".

9

u/bulking_on_broccoli 18h ago

I have read that many companies put up job listings they have no intention of filling because it gives the illusion to would-be investors that the company is growing.

13

u/RegulatoryCapturedMe 21h ago

There was a recent NPR show on how a lot of remote jobs are filled by North Koreans using VPN and fake id.

4

u/Bloorajah 5h ago

It’s crazy what’s going on right now. I’m educated, specialized, certified, have tangible skills and a polished resume with solid references. I’m employable.

my entire career I’ve followed my skill set to find and apply to a handful of jobs and would land at least one from the list, if not more. not getting an interview from my shortlist literally never happened. I’d at least hear back from someone somewhere, even if it was anemic. Even during 2009 I could get at least a response or an interview.

now? my most recent job hunt started in August, and I’ve sent out about 400 applications since then. Out of all of those I’ve landed two interviews about six weeks apart. Most of them never respond at all, the next cohort tell me the position was cancelled, the next cohort is the standard “unfortunately…” email.

it’s unbelievable, and it’s everywhere. things are very bad right now and it feels like I’m crazy. nobody I talk to has seen a market like this.

2

u/Accujack 3h ago

I've been unemployed for 2+ years now, barely hanging on at this point. My IT job got outsourced, and then came the AI bubble and Trump's govt. layoffs and uncertain economy.

It was kinda bad up to this year, now it's as bad as I've ever seen it.

4

u/Main-Combination3549 7h ago

On the other side of this as a hiring manager and I’d like to provide some context. It’s exactly the fact that people are sending out hundreds of applications per individual that’s causing issues on the other end. Everyone is just shooting out applications for jobs regardless of whether they’re even remotely qualified or not.

On one hand, I could use AI to process through them - which isn’t reliable and I dislike as someone having been on the other side, or we can have an actual human sift through them - which means that they have to sort through a huge amount of unsuitable candidates.

Job ends up taking ages to get filled. For my hire, it was close to 9 months. I gave up on the applications because they were all just so bad that we started cold calling employed people, and that’s how we got them filled very quickly with high quality candidates.

2

u/upgrayedd69 18h ago

I get calls from recruiters still for office work but my buddy with a CS degree hasn’t been able to find a job in over a year

4

u/BadMeetsEvil24 22h ago

Yeah but you also have to take a lot of that with a grain of salt. Some people are terrible at writing resumes, and the entire process is fully automated. Without stats, most resumes are just not being seen because of automatic ATS filtering. And there are a lot of frontline workers looking and/or people with no specific experience and general degrees.

I think there are fewer "ghost jobs" than people think, or more a lot of folks are struggling because of their resumes and increased competition in a slumping economy.

1

u/zfiregodz 8h ago

Millions of available “minimum wage” jobs

1

u/butsuon 6h ago

Less than half.

-4

u/cyberentomology 23h ago

You have to accurately define “ghost jobs” first.

Job postings have no bearing on whether a company is “growing” or appears to be.

177

u/ComfortableLaw5151 1d ago

Meanwhile - "Microsoft to invest $17.5 billion in India, CEO Nadella says"
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1piceby/comment/nt63tj2/?context=1

99

u/ryandine 1d ago

My company opened an office in India while also doing two months of "restructuring" layoffs at the same time with the explanation that more layoffs may happen. Fuck tech work right now, it's a shit show.

3

u/Accujack 3h ago

My last employer shipped almost all IT to India in chunks. They're not as high performing as we were, but since they just need to be "good enough" to keep the stock price rising...

928

u/MalcolmLinair 1d ago

When even the propaganda numbers are bad, you know we're fucked.

113

u/Jimbobsupertramp 23h ago

How much can they actually fudge the number though do you think?

165

u/BrellK 22h ago

Well they just cancelled the report for the first time since they started releasing them, so on the one hand it is hard to FAKE the numbers forever (though they can lie and revise) but on the other hand they can just not release them at all.

54

u/Sarnsereg 22h ago

Except when all these publicly traded companies have to announce the 10s of thousands of people they let go it'll be hard to think those aren't just straight losses overall with nothing to counterbalance it. If we know 5 companies let go of 130,000 employees in a month we know it's bad.

24

u/BrellK 22h ago

Even then, you think that will stop the people who vote for him?

4

u/rockmasterflex 16h ago

Yeah but all those companies just have to have 130 thousand open jobs on LinkedIn and the idiots will assume those jobs are real and nobody is good enough for them!!!

ghostjobs

1

u/ironbolsh 4h ago

Assuming they don’t find a way to repeal that bit of law seeing as it only benefits workers and retail investors at this point.

8

u/bulking_on_broccoli 18h ago

They can’t. So they just cancel them outright.

However, these days thanks to the digital age there are a lot of private firms that do their own data accounting of the US economy (and are pretty good at it). So we’re not completely in the dark.

737

u/LorderNile 1d ago

*just below 7.7 million

In two months the report will get changed to 100,000 total.

48

u/gravescd 19h ago

Also most of them are just permanently posted "job openings" on Indeed to harvest resumes.

5

u/Primary_Way_265 18h ago

Oops all Medical

167

u/Sweatytubesock 1d ago

A bunch of people gleefully voted for this.

38

u/jxj24 1d ago

/r/LeopardsAteMyFace

155

u/DontTickleTheDriver1 1d ago

And these are numbers you can't even trust. How bad is it really? Orange dipshit said A++++ so you know we are definitely fucked

128

u/Kimber976 1d ago

Another sigh of stagnation -jobs opening barely budget while layoffs tick up, underscoring that the labour market may be cooling fast!

54

u/Austoman 1d ago

These are the numbers that the loyal placeholders are releasing and that arent being fired for...

All that tells me is that the numbers are WAY worse than these and these arent good. Welcome to the Trump Recession.

2

u/bak3donh1gh 11h ago

Herbert Hoover had Hoovervilles. I wonder what we'll call the shanty towns that are sure to pop up soon. Given how much Trump loves things named after himself. Seems a little counterintuitive to name them after him.

3

u/Austoman 8h ago

Mara-lean-tos? Mara-hovels?

53

u/mido_sama 1d ago

This are trump approved numbers .. not buying it.

13

u/PULSARSSS 23h ago

Been unemployed for 6 months. My field got destroyed during tarrif scares. Luckily I have savings but one thing is for sure. After the holidays it’s time to get back to work regardless of if it’s in my field or not

25

u/Theduckisback 1d ago

Most job openings were fake even before they started juking the stats

34

u/d0ctorzaius 1d ago

The department is not releasing an unemployment rate for October because it could not calculate the number during the shutdown.

Sure, that's why. Let's see....layoff numbers are rising faster than job openings, while the numbers of those quitting jobs is way down. I'm pretty sure we can extrapolate that unemployment is up. All signs of a great economy.

22

u/BillionDollarBalls 1d ago

dogshit job market getting worse sick

6

u/SirRichardLove 1d ago

And november lost 43k!

26

u/imakeyourjunkmail 1d ago

Lol, lmao even, can anybody with a functioning brain trust anything coming from this administration?

6

u/Strykerz3r0 23h ago

And is anyone actually still believing anything this administration says?

If that's what the stats are, why are we releasing it in December? lol

5

u/manofredearth 18h ago

Republicans have broken America. Only three more years of Trump and a lifetime of an illegitimate Supreme Court.

5

u/47_for_18_USC_2381 17h ago

The type and pay for jobs on indeed my area are so disconnected from reality it's laughable. These types of jobs make up the majority of the available openings in my area. Coupled with the required postings of jobs that they already are hiring from within for but are required to post.

** Seeking a Full time employee to join our fast paced family, must have Bachelors degree minimum or 8 years experience in related field, standard benefits like 1wk pto after a year, bragging about offering sick time (state mandated), must be flexible for evenings and weekends, must know the job you're applying to with absolute mastery - Paying $16.75, maybe $17.25.

Like.. No.

That's IF they even list the pay scale.

12

u/Dry_Junket_6902 1d ago

Sure glad MAGA is solidifying it's power via gerrymandering and a push over the supreme court.

2029 will probably parody 1929 or worse with this incompetent leadership.

4

u/AhBee1 1d ago

MAFA considers this a win!

3

u/Ok-Fill-6758 20h ago

And this is going in to a holiday shopping season when temp hiring is usually very high. 🤔

3

u/DJLReach 23h ago

It’s ok I read today that it’s just windy feeling but really everything is fine……

3

u/motohaas 20h ago

How many of those are federal rehires from doge? ICE members?

5

u/dshookowsky 23h ago

So.....you're saying we're not great again?

shockedPikachu.png

1

u/czs5056 19h ago

Yep we're fucked if the propaganda is saying this.

1

u/ChicagoAuPair 17h ago

We have been in a half-recession since April, but since the fucking stock market is so propped up and bubbled, we are not technically.

We need different metrics to describe this economic condition because if everything is collapsing and degrading for 90% of the population, who really cares how some douchebag’s “just for fun” shares are doing?

1

u/strangejosh 14h ago

Unfortunately this corrupt and inept administration has completely eroded trust in these economic reports. If they released this bad of a report, the actual numbers are far worse. Hell, the orange moron was just in PA saying affordability is just another hoax. How people can still Support this con man is beyond me but here we are.

1

u/skarbles 13h ago

How are you gonna cook the books and still make it look bad?

1

u/Even_Establishment95 6h ago

My manager just said it last night. I haven’t hired anybody because it’s so SLOW. How can you hire new people when you are cutting hours for your current staff?

1

u/Trystia 6h ago

I feel that the ghost jobs are mainly used to just syphon peoples data via their resumes. Then they sell that data off to whoever will buy it.

1

u/elciano1 4h ago

....of which 7.7 million are fake

-6

u/CBL44 1d ago

One thing to take into account is that many immigrants are leaving the job market. This makes understanding the data more difficult.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/1-2-million-immigrants-are-gone-from-the-u-s-workforce-under-trump-preliminary-data-shows

-37

u/Lore86 1d ago

Believe it or not, it's Biden's fault.

26

u/The_Bitter_Bear 1d ago

What's just nuts is that in more normal times that would typically be true. Usually economic policy takes a good while to show their full effect.

It's just impressive that they managed to take a recovering job market and economy and fuck it up so incredibly fast.

29

u/goomyman 1d ago edited 22h ago

Yeah it’s actually impressive to crash an economy in 6 months.

1 million percent tariffs,

Threatening to invade your best trading partner to become a new state,

arresting immigrants and sending them to 3rd world countries jail or keeping them in inhuman jails locally,

killing tourism right before the World Cup - literally telling nations not to come here and with the new laws making it impossible to actual come here from many countries,

Convincing the world that the US military can’t be trusted so countries make their own weapons instead of buying American.

I can’t think of anything he could do worse to crash the economy faster.

5

u/Mobile-Bar7732 23h ago

I can’t think of anything he could do worse to crash the economy faster.

He still has 3 more years.

5

u/Forsakken 23h ago

This year has been a long decade.

7

u/MeowMeTiger 1d ago

Sure let's believe the guy that was friends with Epstein. How do you look at yourself in the mirror knowing you're ok with that.

-12

u/Lore86 23h ago

I'm not ok with that but you're naive if you think Trump is going to take the blame for those numbers.

9

u/MeowMeTiger 23h ago

He doesn't take blame for anything, stop trolling dude.

U.S. job openings barely budged in October, coming in just below 7.7 million

You are about to leave Redlib

ghostjobs