Mary Quate, Swindon Socialist Party
There is a spectre looming over the job market. Or, perhaps, many of them. ‘Ghost Jobs’, fake job listings which are never intended to be filled. Everyone who has been on Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) has their share of horror stories, but there’s a common thread in many modern ones – applying for a job, receiving no response of any kind, and then seeing the same job reposted over and over again every few days for the rest of time.
In the wake of Covid, the Tory Brexit deal and a general economic downturn, many workplaces are practically running a skeleton crew, with hiring freezes constantly in effect. Since it’s terrible for morale to tell employees to pick up more duties with no hope of ever having new co-workers to pick up the slack, some job listings exist solely to point to as an indication that the company is, indeed, trying to fix that problem. However, nobody seems to be hiring.
It’s not the only reason HR workers are pressured to do this. Worryingly, surveys of hiring managers indicate that around one third of job listings are simply not real jobs any applicant will ever be given. Instead, these listings exist for the purposes of making it look like the company is growing despite a hiring freeze, tracking job dissatisfaction rates in rival companies, a formality when an internal applicant has already been selected, keeping a readily accessible pool of workers or simply harvesting data to sell on to marketing firms (or for agencies to keep for their own databases).
The DWP demands more and more of those claiming JSA, with means testing requiring an arbitrary minimum number of job applications per week.
Purportedly, some 59% of job listings for veterinary nurses appear to fall into this odd category of jobs that don’t really exist. The next worst is software development jobs, which hover around the 45% mark.
We need decent, secure trade union-organised jobs for all, and an end to the punitive benefits system with real benefits for all who need them.
