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Comment by andro_dev | Hacker News Reader

The number of job postings means nothing. 75% of the job postings are either scam or ghost postings.

Also the same jobs are advertised multiple times, with completely different wording, by multiple recruitment companies.

Then, assuming that the fake job posters are still there and that they now have AI help as well, the fall in the number of postings is more concerning.

Maybe recruiters are also losing their jobs, so the number of duplicates are now less?

Sometimes the position is simply shit. “My” job ad is open again. Looks like the third guy lasted there 6 months too. Every day new agency posts the same job. But Python developer, who can fix custom hardware from the 90s in the night shift is rare. And the salary was very average too.

I had an interview process frozen because of a hiring freeze a few months back. Then news of layoffs occured, predictably.

Last week I see the exact job I applied to posted yet again. Ghost jobs really need to be punished. If you aren't actively talking to candidates within X days of posting or are reposting a job before Y days, there needs to be some disincenive to not do that.

That should change by tomorrow. The EEOC is going to crack down on companies cheating H-1B and posting ghost positions: https://x.com/USTechWorkers/status/1892771344540193076

Any H1B related postings are a tiny fraction of the postings by recruiters and recruitment agencies trying to build up their databases, and companies wanting to look like they’re continuing to grow.

I follow this topic closely and I disagree that it is a tiny fraction.

BLS says there are 140,000 of new job postings for sw engs annually. DOL stats show ~120,000 PERM applications (for which job postings are required - they're not required for H1Bs), of which probably only 20% are for software engineers. So 30,000 / 140,000 - ~21%. Pretty small fraction.

I am not a Trump supporter and I didn't vote for him, but the fact is that Biden's BLS numbers were always manipulated to portray the former president as successful. These statistics are unreliable, in addition, the underlying premise of relying on job postings was flawed from the start which was my initial argument.

Take a look at this, the previous administration hired hundreds of thousands of gov workers to inflate the employment numbers.

https://x.com/VladTheInflator/status/1891600635167981904

Doesn't pass the smell test since the chart for government employees clearly includes more than just Federal. The Federal workforce is about 3mm, but that graph shows 23mm [1], so it clearly can't just be Federal employees.

EDIT: here you go, just looking at Federal employees [2]:

Jan 2021: 2.89 million

Jan 2025: 3.02 million

The Federal government added ~130k employees over the four years that Biden was in office, an increase of about 4.4%.

During that exact same period, all private employment went from 121 million to 135 million, an increase of about 11%. So Federal employment grew slower under Biden than private employment did. [3]

Sources:

1. Total government employees: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USGOVT

2. Total Federal government employees: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001

3. Total private employment: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USPRIV

Thanks for the additional information. The thing is the Trump administration is about to fire 200k probationary federal employees meaning they were hired within in the last year or so. These numbers don't add up either.

"A probationary employee is often a recent hire to the agency or *a long-serving employee who was moved or promoted into a new position*. They are put on a "probationary" period that typically lasts for one or two years, though it can be longer at some agencies. It's like a trial period during which the worker and their performance are under heightened scrutiny."

source: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-probatio...

Yeah, I know FRED is a legit source, but I have absolutely horrible experiences everytime some internet rando is trying to interpret their charts. Just two random FRED charts with marker ink on them already was sending red flags.

I'm a part of the circus, and I don't think many of these have h1-b code smells to it. Companies just wanna hype up AI or whatever and make less people do more work.

If this has general ghost jobs caught in the crossfire too, that'd be amazing. Just don't waste my time on something you already know doesn't exist.

Not gonna happen, I wish there was a way to measure outside of boasts on Twitter.

nothing DOGE posts can be taking as truth

I don't know how this isn't considered SEC fraud by publicly traded companies.

the whole point is to obfuscate growth or decline to blur the ability of business intelligence units to make prediction about the company.

it's a scam for applicants, and a scam on the market.

I'm not convinced H1B issues are related, though I'm sure there are fake adverts for jobs that are unfillable to get H1Bs in, too. Unfortunately Musk, Ramaswamy, and DOGE are all about cheap workers.

It's the trend that matters, not the absolute numbers

The scams and fake job postings on the market are also increasing rapidly, outpacing the growth of overall job listings. This trend is significantly affecting the accuracy of employment and job availability tracking.

So the decline is even bigger than it looks?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-job-listing-ghost-jobs-cbs...

Some are H1B fraud where they already have the person they want and advertise and interview to fool USCIS.

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