When Eric Thompson lost his job in October 2024 and started looking for a new one, he began a drawn-out battle with something many job seekers have come to know too well: the dreaded ghost job.

He became so fed up with the practice that he's put together a working group to propose the Truth in Job Advertising and Accountability Act, or federal legislation that would make the practice illegal.

The first time Thompson, 53, heard the term "ghost job," it was 2023 and his friend was discussing applying endlessly to openings and never hearing back. Could it be all the roles he was submitting to weren't actually real?

Ghost jobs refer to a practice where businesses post an opening without a specific intent to hire from the ad. Companies have different reasons for doing this, like if they're constantly hiring to fill multiple vacancies with that title, to collect and store resumes for a future need, or to signal to investors that they're growing faster than they really are.

Some 17% of all job posts on Greenhouse in the second quarter of 2025 were for roles the business never intended to actually fill, according to data provided to CNBC Make It.

For job seekers, it all boils down to being a time-consuming headache.

"There's nothing illegal about posting a job, currently, and never filling it," says Thompson, a network engineering leader in Warrenton, Virginia. Not to mention, it's "really hard to prove, and so that's one of the reasons that legally, it's been kind of this gray area."

As Thompson researched more into the phenomenon, he connected with former colleagues and professional connections across the country experiencing the same thing. Together, the eight of them decided to form the TJAAA working group to spearhead efforts for federal legislation to officially ban businesses from posting ghost jobs.

In May, the group drafted its first proposal: The TJAAA aims to require that all public job listings include information such as:

• The intended hire and start dates
• Whether it's a new role or backfill
• If it's being offered internally with preference to current employees
• The number of times the position has been posted in the last two years, and other factors, according to the draft language.

It also sets guidelines for how long a post is required to be up (no more than 90 calendar days) and how long the submission period can be (at least four calendar days) before applications can be reviewed.

The proposed legislation applies to businesses with more than 50 employees, and violators can be fined a minimum of $2,500 for each infraction.

The proposal provides a framework at the federal level, Thompson says, because state-level policies won't apply to employers who post listings across multiple states, or who use third-party platforms that operate beyond state borders.

Thompson says he spends 20 to 30 hours per week on his advocacy efforts and doing legislative outreach. So far, he says he's had close to 30 meetings with Congressional staffers working with elected officials on both sides of the aisle.

"We have had a lot of people say, 'We would support this if it came to the floor. However, we are too busy right now to make this a priority,'" Thompson says.

Thompson says he and his TJAAA advocates are now focused on "driving that grassroots campaign to get people to make it a priority for their legislators to sponsor it to come to the floor."

Thompson's work is part of a growing movement to crack down on ghost jobs.

As of Jan. 1, 2026 some companies in Ontario, Canada, will be subject to new laws requiring them to inform job applicants about the status of their candidacy in a timely fashion (essentially banning HR ghosting in the interview process) and also seeks to eliminate the posting of ghost jobs.

In the U.S., state lawmakers in New Jersey, Kentucky and California have their own proposals to prevent HR ghosting and ghost job ads, and to promote transparency in the hiring process.

For now, Thompson's advocacy efforts go toward learning what he can about the legislative process and encouraging job-seekers to speak up about their experiences. He says he's never done this kind of work before and is learning as he goes.

"It's a problem a lot of people know about," Thompson says. "But once people find a job, they forget about it."

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