Vacancy Theater: The Signal Economy

My friends think I have an unhealthy obsession with job market dysfunction, and they're probably right. I find myself bookmarking job postings just to see how long they'll stay up, like some kind of employment archaeologist documenting the half-life of corporate intentions. Last week, I found a "urgent hire" posting from eight months ago still collecting applications. It's either the world's most thorough hiring process or something else entirely. Turns out, it's usually something else entirely. It's like we're all watching a carefully choreographed performance, where the most important part happens offstage.

Something strange is happening in the job market, like a development boom where "Future Home Site" signs sprout on every corner to signal growth to investors, test buyer interest, and keep competitors guessing, while house hunters drive endless loops looking for homes that don't exist yet. Companies are posting positions they don't intend to fill, keeping listings open for months without hiring anyone, and using job postings more as development announcements than genuine recruitment efforts. This isn't a crisis, but it's a quiet choreography that everyone sees and no one names.

This phenomenon deserves a name: vacancy theater. It's the practice of using job postings primarily for their signaling value rather than their hiring function, and it's reshaping how we think about work, opportunity, and trust in the modern economy. We've achieved a peculiar kind of efficiency: companies can signal growth without growing, and candidates can apply without being considered. It's economic theater so sophisticated that even the actors aren't sure if they're hiring.The Development Signs Go Up

A job posting appears on LinkedIn with polished copy that gleams like a freshly installed development sign, requirements that stretch like future amenities, and either no salary range or one so wide it's essentially meaningless. Applications pour in through the applicant tracking system while internally, the posting gets shared in Slack channels as evidence of company growth, proof that construction is happening even when no ground has been broken.

But there's often no real intent to hire, at least not right now, and maybe not at all. The posting exists primarily to be seen, to communicate expansion to various stakeholders, though what exactly will be built and when remains artfully vague.

This isn't entirely new. Economist Michael Spence showed decades ago that when true information is hard to come by, markets rely on signals that approximate the truth. Job postings have become development signs for the corporate world, communicating growth, stability, and forward momentum to multiple audiences simultaneously. The signal can become more important than the actual construction. In a twist that would make classical economists weep, we've created a market where the product (jobs) may not exist, but the marketing (postings) is exquisite.The Rise of Ghost Jobs (And Their Surprising Benefits)

Recent data reveals the scope of this issue. ResumeBuilder's 2024 survey of more than 1,600 hiring managers found that nearly 40% posted fake job listings in the past year, with some companies posting as many as 75 or more ghost positions. The Wall Street Journal reported similar findings, noting that one in five jobs advertised may be fake or unfilled. Meanwhile, Revelio Labs found that the ratio of hires per job posting has dropped dramatically, from 0.75 hires per posting in 2018 to below 0.5 in 2023, meaning only every other job posting results in an actual hire. Like developers who've mastered the art of "coming soon" signs that never quite arrive, some companies have turned job posting into performance art.

These aren't always deliberate deceptions, and they're not entirely without value. Sometimes companies post jobs like developers who put up signs before securing permits, testing the water temperature, building prospect lists for future needs, or maintaining the appearance of momentum without budget approval. For employers, this provides legitimate market research: gauging talent availability, understanding salary expectations, seeing who's interested in their company, and maintaining talent pipelines for genuine future openings.

For job seekers, the benefits are admittedly thinner but occasionally real: early exposure to companies they might not have considered, networking opportunities through the application process, and skill development through crafting applications (though this feels like praising practice tests that never lead to actual exams).

But the effect on job seekers remains predominantly negative: hours spent crafting applications for positions that exist primarily as concepts rather than concrete opportunities.Meanwhile, legitimate job postings are staying open longer than ever, like development projects that break ground but never seem to finish. Revelio Labs research shows that active job postings have generally plateaued since January 2024, while the time to fill positions has increased. This elongation coincides with an overall cooling in job postings after the pandemic hiring surge, creating a market where positions stay visible long past their usefulness. The modern job market has inadvertently created a new economic principle: Schrödinger's Position, simultaneously open and filled until observed by a hiring manager.

The broader market pays attention too. Investors increasingly use job posting data as an early indicator of company growth, sometimes ahead of official announcements. When postings are primarily development announcements rather than construction projects, these signals become unreliable, like reading building permits that may never result in actual structures. This creates what economists might call "signal inflation." As more companies use job postings for purposes beyond hiring, the actual information value degrades for everyone who relies on this data. Investors make decisions based on hiring activity that may not represent real expansion, while competitors make strategic moves based on talent acquisition that isn't actually happening. It's a market where everyone is reading the same development signs, but half of them point to empty lots.The Human Impact

Behind every ghost job posting are real people spending real time on applications that go nowhere, like prospective home buyers driving from development to development only to find that the model homes are just for show. They research companies, customize resumes, write cover letters that attempt to decode what the company actually wants, and prepare for interviews that may never come.

Over time, this creates what we might call "application fatigue," a wariness that settles in like dust on all those unused development brochures. Job seekers become more selective and skeptical, less willing to invest their best effort in what might be another empty lot. The enthusiasm that makes for good hiring gradually erodes into ritual and routine.

Recruiters feel this too. When half their applicant pool is responding to what are essentially marketing materials rather than real construction projects, their days fill with noise instead of signal. They begin treating resumes as data points rather than stories, and the human element that makes hiring work slowly drains from the process. It's reached the point where some recruiters joke about needing a job posting for someone to sort through applications for jobs that don't exist.A Path Forward

The solution isn't to eliminate all development signaling from job postings; that would be neither possible nor wise. Instead, organizations can align their signaling more closely with their actual construction plans, like responsible developers who only put up signs when they have permits in hand.

• Post fewer roles with more intention. Rather than announcing speculative developments, focus on positions with confirmed budgets and clear building timelines.

• Honor your stated salary ranges. If you post a range, be prepared to hire within it. Posting $60K to $120K when you'll only consider candidates at $65K damages trust and wastes everyone's time, like advertising luxury homes when you're only building starter condos.

• Close stale postings promptly. Don't let job listings become abandoned development sites. If you're not actively building, take the signs down.

• Allow some imperfection to show through. Perfect polish often signals speculative development. A posting that acknowledges challenges or uncertainties can seem more trustworthy than one that promises everything will be seamless, like developers who honestly discuss soil conditions and permit timelines.

• Use other channels for signaling. If you want to communicate growth to investors or stability to employees, consider more direct methods than fake construction announcements.Looking Ahead

The job market is in a trust recession. Years of ghost jobs, inflated requirements, and misleading postings have made both candidates and employers more guarded. Rebuilding that trust requires organizations to remember that job postings aren't just marketing materials; they're promises made to real people with mortgages, ambitions, and finite patience.

The companies that succeed in this environment will be those that treat job seekers' time as valuable, align their job postings with their actual development plans, and those who remember, authentic hiring beats vacancy theater.Citations

1. Spence, Michael. "Job Market Signaling." Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3), 1973.

2. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.

3. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Zone Books, 1994 (original 1967).

4. Waldman, Michael. "Job Assignments, Signalling, and Efficiency." RAND Journal of Economics, 15(2), 1984.

5. ResumeBuilder. "40% of Companies Posted Fake Job Listings in 2024." Survey of 1,600+ hiring managers, 2024. https://www.resumebuilder.com/survey-fake-job-listings/

6. Cook, Lynn. "Fake Job Postings Are Becoming a Real Problem." Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-job-postings-are-becoming-a-real-problem

7. Revelio Labs. "Ghost Job Postings." Workforce Intelligence Research, 2024. https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/macro/ghost-job-postings/

8. Built In. "Ghost Jobs: What They Are, How to Spot Them." September 17, 2024. https://builtin.com/articles/ghost-jobs

9. Revelio Labs. "Workforce Digest February 2025." February 2025. https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/workforce-digest/workforce-digest-february-2025/

10. Revelio Labs. "2024 Workforce Insights Wrapped." December 2024. https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/social/2024-workforce-insights-wrapped/

11. SHRM. "Pay Transparency Laws Taking Effect in 2025." Jan 2025. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/state-and-local-updates/pages/pay-transparency-laws-2025

12. Axios. "Minnesota Requires Salary Ranges in Job Postings." 2024. https://www.axios.com/local/twin-cities/2024/07/01/minnesota-salary-transparency-law

13. Babina, Tania, Lenzu, Simone, & Rinz, Kevin. "Are Online Job Postings Informative to Investors?" SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2988801

14. Colquitt, Jason A. "Justice at the Millennium: A Meta-Analytic Review of 25 Years of Organizational Justice Research." Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 2001.

15. Seligman, Martin E. P. "Learned Helplessness: Annual Review of Medicine." Annual Review of Medicine, 23(1), 1972. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.000245