Ghost Jobs in Europe: What the Data Shows So Far

The term gets used loosely, so it helps to be precise. A ghost job is a listing posted without a genuine, active vacancy behind it. In practice that covers a few different situations:

• A role already filled internally before the ad went live, posted to satisfy a compliance requirement
• A position that went on hold but was never taken down
• A listing reposted every few weeks to appear fresh while nobody reviews incoming applications
• A job posted to build a candidate database for future openings, with no current hiring intent

They look identical to real listings. That is the core problem.

Germany has one of the better-documented cases in Europe. In July 2025, The Stepstone Group published findings from a survey of 8,100 respondents, including more than 500 HR managers. According to that survey, 64% of German job seekers reported being ghosted by a company after applying — meaning they submitted an application and never received any response (source).

The most common dropout point was immediately after sending documents, reported in 44% of cases. Around 9.5% of respondents said they received no feedback even after completing a first interview.

Germany has this data partly because Stepstone has the scale to collect it. The underlying behavior likely exists in other European markets at similar rates. The difference is that Germany has the numbers to point to.

The UK has more published research on employer ghosting than any other European country, which makes it the most discussed market in this region.

CV Genius surveyed 625 hiring managers in the UK in 2024 and found that 56% of employers ghost job applicants at some point during the process. Of that group, 33% said they were likely to cut contact without explanation, and 23% said they had no problem with the practice (source).

Greenhouse, whose 2024 State of Job Hunting report surveyed 2,500 workers across the UK, US, and Germany, found that 45% of UK candidates were ghosted after an initial recruiter conversation, and 42% after a formal interview (source).

A survey by Pertemps, one of the larger UK recruitment firms, found that 51% of job seekers named unexplained communication cutoff as their biggest frustration (source).

Some surveys suggest that younger hiring managers may be more likely to cut off communication, though this varies by company and role.

If you want to check whether a UK listing shows signs of being a ghost job before applying, the ghost job checker looks at posting behavior, language patterns, and company signals.

The Netherlands does not have strong published data on ghost jobs specifically. What it does have is one of the highest job vacancy rates in the European Union — around 4%, according to Eurostat (source).

High vacancy rates and ghost job density tend to correlate, though imperfectly. When companies report a large number of open roles, some portion of those listings serve purposes other than active hiring. Whether that is happening at scale in the Dutch market is not well-documented yet. The structural conditions for it exist.

Poland's situation is notable because it surfaced in a political context. In 2024, a petition was submitted to the Polish Ministry of Labor requesting legislation that would require employers to notify candidates of recruitment outcomes. The petition was not passed.

That a petition reached that stage at all reflects the scale of frustration being reported, particularly in the technology sector. Polish job boards and professional communities have accumulated a significant volume of accounts describing applications sent without response and processes started then abandoned.

Industry estimates suggest that a meaningful share of listings in some sectors may behave like ghost jobs, but these figures are not independently verified and should be treated with caution.

These three markets are harder to characterize under the ghost job label specifically.

France saw job posting volumes decline by around 4% on a quarterly basis in early 2025, according to Indeed data (source). A contracting market tends to mean less speculative hiring activity, which would suggest fewer pipeline-building ghost listings.

Italy and Spain moved in the opposite direction. Job postings in Italy grew by around 9% and in Spain by around 4% in the same period, driven partly by economic stimulus and growth in services (source).

Active hiring growth tends to reduce the proportion of ghost listings simply because companies actually need to fill roles.

The reasons are varied, and not all of them are cynical.

A 2024 survey by MyPerfectResume found that among recruiters who admitted to posting ghost jobs: 38% said they do it to maintain presence on job boards during periods when they are not actively hiring, 36% to assess how effective their job postings are, and 26% to gather market intelligence (source).

There is also a more mundane explanation that rarely gets enough attention: a listing goes live, internal circumstances change, and nobody removes it. Budget gets frozen. The hiring manager moves to another role. A department restructures. The listing stays up because taking it down requires someone to remember it exists.

The practical consequence of ghost jobs is that silence after an application is no longer a reliable signal about your candidacy.

A few patterns that tend to appear in ghost listings:

• The listing has been active for more than 30 days without updates
• The same role appears across multiple platforms with near-identical wording
• The description is generic, with no named team, hiring manager, or department
• The company shows signs of a hiring freeze or recent layoffs but still lists multiple open roles

The ghost job checker looks at a combination of these signals and gives you a quick read before you invest time in an application.

If you want to know whether a specific job posting shows signs of being a ghost job, the tool is free and takes about ten seconds.

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