If you’re reading this and aren’t a trust fund kid, there’s a good chance you’ve endured a seemingly endless and increasingly frustrating job hunt at some point in your adult life. But have you noticed that while so many places seem to be hiring, nobody is actually hiring?


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A TikToker posted a video asking that exact question, and another TikToker, Andra, sought out to help people understand exactly what’s going on. She opens with a lowball estimate of how many jobs she’s applied to since graduating college in the winter of 2021: 3,000. She continues to say that statistically, jobs on the market are at an all-time high, so why does it feel like it’s impossible to get hired anywhere?


Showing us her LinkedIn application history, we can see that out of the many applications she submitted, only one was viewed. Andra goes on to explain that this is because most of these jobs aren’t real. She cites her own work experience and the fact that one of her friends works for a company that we’ll call “Sailing Forces,” explaining that she noticed that one day, the company had hundreds of jobs listed on LinkedIn, and when she mentioned them to her friend, he explained that it was unlikely that any of those jobs were real. Instead, the company posts the same job ads over and over again so it looks like the company is continuously growing, looking good to people on the outside.


The phenomenon she’s describing are ghost jobs, as the Wall Street Journal explained early last year. In addition to making it seem like the company is growing despite the uncertain economic climate, ghost jobs also ensure companies have a constant pool of quality candidates for jobs they may need to fill at a later date.


Per the vice president of communications at Indeed, who would definitely know a thing or two about applying for jobs, the best way to avoid ghost jobs is to look for detailed job descriptions; “more specifics, such as schedules of a clear list of responsibilities, might indicate that an employer is serious,” he told the WSJ.


Looking for a job is already a demoralizing and painful process — why must companies make it even harder on applicants? Right, because they don’t care about anything except their bottom line.