Ghost jobs are a nuisance for jobseekers. They linger for months, dupe eager applicants to pursue fake jobs, and could be damaging our economic future.
Ghost jobs are advertised positions that an employer has no intention of filling — or that have already been filled — and there may be thousands of them in Australia.
The Reserve Bank uses job postings as one of a series of measures in its assessments of employment, which plays a role in its decisions on interest rates.
Others see ghost jobs as just one of many factors driving up job vacancies.
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.
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 America, a common reason for posting ghost job ads was to “maintain a presence on job boards even when we aren’t hiring”, recruiters said.
Another reason is downright Pavlovian and cheeky.
The fake job ads are there to “assess the effectiveness” of “job descriptions”.
Without knowing the full extent of Ghost jobs, it’s difficult to know just how big a distortion these fake job ads are delivering to our economy.
ABS methodology
Only Cheech and Chong believe the ABS unemployment methodology bears any resemblance to reality.
According to the ABS, not only must you not be in employment, but you can’t have done even one hour of paid work in the four weeks prior to the survey. You must have applied for something in the previous four weeks – and you must be available to start immediately. That narrows down the field.
The ABS estimate does not take into account people who have been employed for a few hours of part-time work per week but would like to work more hours. To the ABS, these folk are happily ‘employed’.
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) estimates that by taking into account the hidden unemployed – people who have given up looking – and ‘underemployment’ the real level of joblessness is approximately double that given by the ABS.
If the government wants an accurate take on the nation’s economic pulse, these people must be included in any measure of the jobless.