What Are Ghost Jobs?

A ghost job is a posting for a role a company never really intends to fill. You apply, maybe you wait weeks, and the job was never going anywhere in the first place.

It's different from ghosting — which we covered here — where an employer engages with you, then goes silent. Ghost jobs go quiet before you're even in the running.

How common is it?

More than half. A national survey from Employment Hero found 56% of Canadian workers suspect they've applied to a ghost job at some point. Ontario job seekers reported the highest suspicion rate in the country, at 61%.

On the employer side, a widely cited survey of hiring managers found close to 4 in 10 companies had posted a listing with no real intent to fill it — often to build a talent pipeline, make growth look stronger than it is, or just keep a posting up "in case someone great applies."

Why it matters beyond wasted time

This isn't just an annoyance. The same Employment Hero research found 70% of job seekers say being ghosted — by a real employer or a ghost posting — affects their mental health and motivation to keep searching, with a third describing the impact as significant or severe.

What Ontario's new rules actually cover

The same legislation requiring employers to respond within 45 days after a final interview also pushes for more posting transparency — including salary range disclosure. It's a real step, but it doesn't require a company to prove a posting is genuine before publishing it. Ontario job seekers themselves are split on how much it'll help: most surveyed believe the new rules are a positive step, but nearly all expect employers to find workarounds.

What you can actually do

- Check how long a posting's been up. A role sitting active for months with no movement is a signal, not proof.

- Look for salary ranges. Postings without one get skipped by the majority of job seekers for a reason — it's often a sign of a less transparent process overall.

- Track it anyway. Even if a posting turns out to be a ghost job, tracking it tells you (and eventually, other applicants) that it went nowhere — which is useful information the next person searching for that same role deserves to see.

That last point is the whole reason Bodash exists. We can't tell you which postings are real before you apply. But once enough people are tracking the same roles, the pattern shows up on its own — a job with dozens of "Applied, no update" entries starts to look exactly like what it probably is.

We are a job tracker. Our mission is to make the application to hire process visible for all applicants. We can do it together.

— The Bodash Team

Start tracking your applications at bodash.co