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Comment by DebtDeflation | Hacker News Reader

It is absolutely 80%+. The majority of the time, it is a company looking to sponsor an H1B for a role or they have an H1B in the role who they want to sponsor for PERM status (Green Card) and the law requires them to post the job to prove there are no Americans available. The next most common reason is they have identified an internal candidate for the role but corporate policy requires all jobs to be posted externally to show they are looking for the best person. The next most common reason is HR conducting market research on compensation. In all cases, there is no intent to actually fill the role with an external hire.

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80% of what? There are 85,000 H1B visas per year, and vastly more job postings (and hirings of citizens) each year.

85,000 new H1B's. But there are multiples of that already in the US who already hold visas. So, the actual number is in the hundreds of thousands, enough to make a serious impact on supply of labor in the tech sector.

That makes a massive difference, if true.

In this case, the relevant comparison is 85,000 net new H1B visas to the total of job postings, since the parent post seemed to be saying 80% of job postings are ghost postings from companies seeking H1B visas.

Needless to say, that doesn't make any sense.

No. Neither of us said 80% are H1-B. We were agreeing that 80% aren't actually obtainable jobs, but neither of us attempted to determine what percent is from what cause.

> The majority of the time, it is a company looking to sponsor an H1B for a role

You're right that I shouldn't have said 80%, but this still implies almost half of all job postings are ghost jobs from companies trying to hire H1-B visa workers.

It's still an insane claim.

Job Listing Site Highlighting H-1B Positions So Americans Can Apply - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44892321 - August 2025 (106 comments)

https://jobs.now

The other kind that are insidious are the MLM people. They post a 'job' and it turns out you are about to be sold an MLM. But you can 'be your own boss!!!'

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