Spain's Ghost Job Problem: How Many Online Listings Are Real Vacancies?

The Growing Gap Between Spain's Job Ads and Actual Hiring

Spain's digital job boards paint a picture of a busy hiring market. InfoJobs alone recorded 2.46 million vacancies in 2025, alongside 4.25 million candidates and 136.6 million applications. But counting job ads is not the same as counting real positions: as Eurostat has pointed out, an online announcement may refer to several open roles, or to none at all, for example when an employer is merely testing the market.

The mismatch is known in the United States as 'ghost jobs' — postings that do not correspond to an existing vacancy the company intends to fill immediately. They may be used to build candidate pipelines, search for an exceptional profile, or they may simply linger after a role has been frozen or filled. Cedefop and Eurostat analysed 134 million European job ads between 2021 and 2024 and warned that these figures should not be read as the number of available posts.

Spain has no official measure of the phenomenon, so its true size is unknown. A 2024 study by tech recruitment firm Manfred looked at more than 7,000 tech vacancies on LinkedIn in Spain and found more than 2,000 had been open for at least 30 days — around 28.6% of the total. The firm cautioned that this does not make them automatically fake: difficult-to-fill roles can stay online longer. But the absence of systematic measurement leaves candidates unable to tell which listings are a genuine route to a job.

The stakes are high in a Spanish labour market where Eurostat put the vacancy rate at 0.9% in the first quarter of 2026, less than half the EU average of 2.1%, and where unemployment remained at 10.0% in July. When many candidates chase few verified openings, time spent on frozen or expired processes is especially expensive.

What Greenhouse, Ashby and Manfred Reveal About Ghost Jobs

What Greenhouse and Ashby's Data Show

Greenhouse, one of the main applicant tracking systems, classified between 18% and 22% of positions on its platform as ghost jobs in some quarters. Ashby, another hiring platform, studied more than 22,000 recruitment processes and found that 18% of open positions ended without a hire. The two figures are not identical: an unfilled vacancy is not necessarily fake from the outset. Budget freezes, strategy changes or roles that continue circulating after being covered all produce the same outcome.

The most important caveat is that in companies with at least 50 employees, Ashby found 97.5% of open positions had led at least one candidate to an interview. That suggests active recruitment is happening in most cases, even when the process does not end in a contract. Read together, the studies point to a real but bounded problem — not a labour market where most ads are invented.

Spain Is Still Flying Blind

Unlike the United States, Spain has no official statistic measuring ghost jobs. Eurostat's vacancy rate for Spain was 0.9% in the first quarter of 2026, well below the EU average of 2.1%, while InfoJobs reported 56 candidates per vacancy in 2025. That environment makes wasted applications costly. Manfred's analysis of more than 7,000 LinkedIn tech postings found 28.6% had been open for more than 30 days, but the firm deliberately stopped short of calling them all ghost jobs because difficult roles can remain live longer. The honest conclusion is that Spain knows it has a problem, but not its size.

AI Is Increasing the Volume on Both Sides

Artificial intelligence cuts both ways. It can flag duplicated ads, old postings or non-existent companies, but it cannot know whether a real multinational has approved the budget to hire. Meanwhile, AI has sharply lowered the cost of applying. Greenhouse reports that recruiters in the UK, Ireland and Germany already handle almost three times more applications per post than in 2021, and 78% of candidates in those markets use AI to tailor CVs or applications. The result is a paradox: automation makes filtering easier, but it also multiplies the volume that has to be filtered.

Economists James Albrecht and Susan Vroman describe ghost vacancies as an informational externality. Because candidates cannot tell which ads are active, they change their search behaviour and concentrate on the most recent postings. That is a rational response, but it also means older yet real vacancies risk being ignored.

How Spanish Job Seekers Can Filter Ghost Listings

For Job Seekers

• Check the company career page before investing time. Eurostat warns a single ad may correspond to several vacancies or to none, and filled roles can keep circulating because portals copy them. The employer's own site is usually the most current source.
• Treat listing age as one signal, not proof. Manfred found 28.6% of Spanish tech vacancies on LinkedIn had been open longer than 30 days; difficult-to-fill roles can legitimately stay up. Verify before assuming a long-running ad is fake.
• Apply early when you see a recent, relevant opening. Research by Albrecht and Vroman shows candidates tend to concentrate on the newest ads, so older real vacancies can be neglected — and competition on those newest ads rises quickly.
• Use AI for verification, not certainty. AI can flag duplicate or suspicious postings, but it cannot confirm that a real company has budget to hire. Treat an AI-detected match as a reason to check, not a final answer.

For Employers and Job Boards

• Audit stale postings on your own career site and portals. Greenhouse's 18%–22% ghost-job share shows how quickly dead ads can accumulate; leaving them online inflates applications and damages candidate trust.
• Add a funded-vacancy check to the approval process. Since AI-driven applications have tripled recruiters' loads in some markets, publishing only budget-approved roles reduces both noise and reputational risk.