How we verify every job, and how to spot a ghost job
A “ghost job” is a live listing for a position nobody is actually trying to fill right now. It isn't a scam — nobody's asking for your bank details — it's a real company running a real ad for a role that may never open, may already be filled internally, or was posted a year ago and simply never taken down. The U.S. Congress's own research service has looked into how common they are (linked below); estimates vary a lot by platform and method, but every serious analysis agrees it's a meaningful share of what you see on the biggest boards. On Workcamino we didn't want to ask you to trust a number, so we built the opposite: every one of the 192,085 listings we tracked on 20 October 2026 is checked against its original source every single day and pulled the moment it disappears. That count moves by thousands a day in both directions, and the live figure is always on our data page. Here's exactly how that works, and the warning signs worth knowing wherever else you're job hunting.
Why companies post jobs they don't intend to fill
It's rarely malicious. The honest reasons, in order of how often they actually happen: building a pipeline of candidates for a role that might open later; an internal promotion or transfer already agreed on paper, with the public posting only there to satisfy a policy requiring one; testing the market to see what salary a role commands before committing to headcount; and, less flatteringly, signalling growth to investors or keeping existing staff a little uncertain about their own job security. None of it is illegal today in most places — which is exactly why checking for yourself matters.
The warning signs, wherever you're looking
Check the posting date first. A listing that's sat unchanged for 45 days or more, with no reposts or edits, is the single strongest signal something's stalled — genuine hiring processes move faster than that. Second, search for the exact role on the company's own careers page directly; if a listing exists on a job board but not on the employer's own site, it's either stale or was never actively maintained in the first place. Third, look for a named hiring manager, a specific team, or any human detail — postings from a faceless generic account with zero context are the ones with the least accountability behind them. Fourth, on LinkedIn specifically, a “Reposted” badge is close to a direct admission that the first round didn't lead anywhere.
How we actually check, every day
Every listing on Workcamino comes from a source the employer controls: a company's own career system — Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, SmartRecruiters, SAP SuccessFactors, Ashby, Teamtailor, Recruitee, Personio, Workable — or an official public job feed: Norway's NAV, Sweden's Arbetsförmedlingen, Germany's Bundesagentur für Arbeit, France Travail and Spain's Empléate. We never pull from other job boards; that would just mean checking the same stale copy everyone else already has. As of 20 October 2026 that is 229 separate sources carrying 192,085 open listings — 169,814 from the five national feeds, 10,465 from companies' own career pages, and 11,806 from a curated feed of English-language German ads. The full list, with how many listings each source carries today, is on our data page.
The check itself is simple in principle: re-fetch every source, compare it against what we already have, and mark anything missing as expired. In practice the detail that matters is not overreacting to a hiccup. If a source times out or rate-limits us mid-check — which happens, some companies' systems throttle automated requests — we don't treat that as proof the jobs are gone. A single failed fetch shields that company's listings from removal until the next clean check; only an unambiguous “this posting doesn't exist anymore” response starts the clock on taking it down. Take the run on 20 October 2026: 226 of the 229 sources answered cleanly, 9,401 new listings came in, and 7,725 that had quietly disappeared since the day before were expired. The three sources that failed kept every listing they had, untouched, because a broken fetch is not evidence that anyone stopped hiring. That is the ordinary daily churn of a live job market, caught the same day it happens.
What this actually gets you
Practically: when you browse jobs on Workcamino, every listing you see existed on its source as of today's run, not last month, and the apply link a pass opens goes to the employer's own page rather than a copy of it. Nothing here is designed to look busier than it is. Two numbers, and they are different on purpose: we track 192,085 openings across Europe, and we list the 1,865 of them that either mention visa sponsorship or say the work can be done remotely. The first is what this page and the data tables are about; the second is what the board actually carries. The same checking is what makes our numbers citable: because every ad is verified against its source, the counts on Data & numbers — how many jobs per country are advertised in English, how many ask for no experience, how many mention visa sponsorship — describe jobs that are actually open, not a pile of ghosts. Journalists and researchers can download those tables as CSV and reuse them with a link. If you're also applying through other channels while you search, the checklist above travels with you: date, cross-check, named contact, reposted badge. It takes thirty seconds per listing and it's the difference between a real shot and an afternoon you don't get back.
Where the law is heading
Regulators are starting to treat this as worth legislating, not just complaining about. Ontario has legally required employers with 25 or more staff to disclose whether a public job posting is for an existing vacancy since 1 January 2026. California's Assembly Bill 1251 would do something similar for the largest state economy in the US: it passed the State Assembly on 2 June 2025, was then held under submission in a Senate committee that August, and the trackers still had it pending through spring 2026 — passed by one house, not law. Check the link below for where it stands before repeating it as settled. Worth watching if you want to know whether “is this a real vacancy?” becomes a question employers have to answer honestly by default, instead of one you have to work out yourself.
None of this replaces judgement — a company can comply with every disclosure law and still waste your afternoon. But a daily-verified board and a thirty-second checklist both move the odds meaningfully in your favour. Browse what's open right now, or read how to write a CV that survives the filters once you've found something worth applying to. Buen camino.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a ghost job?
A live job ad for a position nobody is actively trying to fill right now — not a scam, a real company, often just an old posting nobody took down, a role kept open to build a candidate pipeline, or a job that was already filled internally before the ad went up.
Is it illegal for a company to post a ghost job?
Not yet, almost everywhere. Ontario has required employers to disclose whether a public job posting is for an existing vacancy since 1 January 2026. California's AB 1251 passed the State Assembly in June 2025 but has been held under submission in a Senate committee since that August — check the links below for its current status before repeating either as settled law.
How often does Workcamino check its listings?
Every day. A scheduled pipeline re-fetches all 229 sources — company career systems and national job APIs — and removes any listing that's no longer on its original page, the same day. On 20 October 2026 that meant 9,401 new listings in and 7,725 expired out.
What's the difference between a ghost job and a job scam?
A ghost job wastes your time; a scam tries to take your money or identity. They're different problems with different fixes — the FTC's job scams page (linked below) covers the second one, which is the more dangerous of the two.
How do I spot a ghost job on a site that doesn't check daily?
Check the posting date — anything sitting unchanged for 45+ days is a warning sign. Search for the exact role on the company's own careers page; if it isn't there, be skeptical. And look for a named hiring contact or team detail — generic postings from a faceless account are the least accountable kind.
Does Workcamino ever pull listings from other job boards?
No. Every listing comes straight from a company's own career system or an official public job API, never scraped from Indeed, LinkedIn or any other board — so we're checking the same source the employer controls, not a copy of a copy.