New York Passes Bill Targeting Ghost Jobs, With Fines of Up to $2,500 Per Posting
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The News
New York state lawmakers passed a bill on June 2 that aims to crack down on 'ghost jobs' — postings for positions that either do not exist or are not intended to be filled. The bill, designated S8877, now awaits delivery to Governor Kathy Hochul for signature.
Under the legislation, any print or digital job posting must include a timeframe for filling the position. If the job is expected to be filled within 90 days, the posting must state in bold capital letters: 'This position is for a current vacancy, and the employer intends to fill this position by (date).' If the timeframe exceeds 90 days, the posting must note that the role is not for a current vacancy but will be filled 'no sooner than (date).' Employers who have no intention of filling the role at all must state as much. Postings must be removed within two weeks of the position being filled.
The penalties escalate steeply: $2,500 per non-compliant posting, rising to $5,000 if not corrected within 30 days, and doubling every subsequent 30 days. The bill follows similar legislative activity in Pennsylvania (HB2321) and New Jersey (S2136), signalling a broader regulatory push for job-ad transparency. Research from MyPerfectResume suggests nearly one in three US job listings does not result in an actual hire.
Why It Matters
For talent acquisition leaders, this is not a distant compliance concern. Ghost jobs erode candidate trust in employer brands, waste recruiter time on dead requisitions, and distort the labour market data that HR leaders rely on for workforce planning. If New York's bill becomes law — and if Pennsylvania and New Jersey follow — enterprise TA teams with national hiring footprints will need to audit their job posting practices to ensure every open requisition has a clear, documented intention to fill.
The bill also introduces a new compliance burden on third-party job boards and programmatic advertising platforms. TA teams that rely on automated job distribution will need to verify that their ATS or CRM can support time-stamped vacancy declarations and automated removal of filled postings. This is as much a technology readiness challenge as a legal one.
Taking Action
All action is situated in your corporate context. These are starting points, not prescriptions — choose what fits.
Connect
Who to talk with in your enterprise
Your legal and compliance team — ask them to assess whether your organisation's current job-posting practices would comply with S8877 if it becomes law, and whether your hiring footprint in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey requires immediate action.
Your HR technology operations lead — verify that your ATS supports automated removal of filled-role postings within the bill's two-week window, and check whether your programmatic job distribution vendors can enforce state-specific posting language requirements.
Inspect
What to take a closer look at
Run an audit of your organisation's current open requisitions: for each one, confirm whether there is a documented intention to fill, a target hire date, and whether the posting was removed within two weeks of the last fill. Specific tool to look at: your ATS's requisition management dashboard — review the ratio of open requisitions to active candidates-in-process to identify postings that may no longer be live hiring efforts.
Reflect
What to think about more deeply
The most interesting question isn't whether your organisation posts ghost jobs intentionally — it's whether your hiring managers and recruitment process generate ghost jobs by default through stale requisitions, unfilled backfills, and automated evergreen postings that no one remembers to switch off. If one in three US listings doesn't result in a hire, how many of them belong to your team?