New York Takes on Ghost Jobs with NEW S8877 LAW

The job boards are broken, and everyone navigating the current hiring market knows exactly why. Job seekers spend countless hours tailoring resumes and drafting cover letters, only to realize weeks later that the position they applied for never existed. It was a ghost job… a placeholder left online by companies to project artificial growth, placate overworked staff, or quietly harvest user data and ideas through a convoluted, inefficient, 6 step interview process.

Many of you may not know this about me, but I studied law enforcement and criminal justice at Newbury College in Massachusetts and amassed 32 credits before adjusting my major to Computer Science so that I could focus my major towards Cyber Crime and Criminal Digital/Data Forensics, which I continued with UOP and Purdue. I am a real stickler for laws, compliance, and loopholes. This makes me ultra valuable as a PM in highly regulated industries. So let us explore how this is going to impact companies, recruiters, HR, and candidates.

New York lawmakers are attempting to force accountability with Senate Bill S8877. The bill targets the widespread practice of fake job listings, forcing mid- to large-sized employers and third-party job boards to be honest about their intent to hire.

If signed into law by Governor Hochul, S8877 will mandate that listings include highly visible disclosures and adhere to strict removal timelines.

• The bill officially passed both the New York State Senate and Assembly on June 2, 2026, and it is currently awaiting formal delivery to the Governors desk.
• The Batching Process: In New York, bills that pass the legislature during the main session are typically held and delivered to the Governor in organized batches. This administrative process often extends through the summer and into the fall or end of the calendar year.
• Once the bill is officially delivered to Governor Hochul’s desk, she will have 10 days (excluding Sundays) to either sign it into law or veto it.
• Governor Hochul has not yet taken a public stance on the bill. However, if she does choose to sign it, the statute dictates that it will take effect immediately. This means employers and job boards will have virtually no transition period to implement the mandatory bold, capitalized disclosures and the 14-day removal rule.

The Scope and Core Mandates of S8877

The reach of this legislation is specific:

• It applies strictly to private employers with 100 or more employees, explicitly exempting the state, public authorities, and governmental agencies.

Under the new legislation, covered employers and third-party job platforms can no longer hide behind vague hiring windows. Listings must explicitly state hiring intentions in BOLD, CAPITAL LETTERS based on three strict criteria:

1. Active Openings (Under 90 Days): The posting must state the exact date by which the employer intends to fill the position: THIS POSTING IS FOR A CURRENT VACANCY AND THE EMPLOYER INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION BY (DATE).
2. Active Openings (Over 90 Days): The posting must specify that the role will be filled no sooner than a specific date: THIS POSTING IS FOR A CURRENT VACANCY AND THE EMPLOYER INTENDS TO FILL THIS POSITION NO SOONER THAN (DATE).
3. Talent Pipeline (No Active Vacancy): If there is no expectation that the job is to be filled, the listing must read: THIS POSTING IS NOT FOR A CURRENT VACANCY BUT THE EMPLOYER IS SEEKING RESUMES TO REVIEW IN THE FUTURE WHEN JOBS BECOME AVAILABLE.

Additionally, once a job is filled, companies and job boards have exactly 14 days to scrub the listing from the internet. Non-compliance triggers a $2,500 fine per publication, which applies to each individual print publication or digital platform where the bad ad appears. Employers have 30 days to fix it; if left uncorrected, the fine hits $5,000 and continues to double every 30 days thereafter.

Notably, the bill does not grant a private right of action. Job seekers cannot sue companies directly; instead, aggrieved individuals must report violations to the New York State Department of Labor, which is granted sole authority to conduct enforcement audits.

The Compliance Loophole: Why Fines Dont Equal Enforcement

While S8877 is a monumental step toward transparency, it exposes a deeper, structural flaw in corporate accountability. That is why I am concerned that people wont care too much about the $2,500 fine, especially if they are reaping more from data harvesting scams.

For a massive corporation or a data-broker-backed job platform, a thousands-of-dollars penalty is simply the cost of doing business. If the financial return of collecting, profiling, and selling candidate data outweighs the fine, the ghost jobs will stay up, and the fines will be factored into the operating budget.

We have seen this exact play before with interview assessments.

There are widespread beliefs that strict limits protect candidates, yet companies continue to break the rules with impunity. Job seekers routinely face multi-hour take-home assignments, extensive presentations, and uncompensated projects just to stay in the running for a role.

This corporate bypassing of regulations happens because the entire pre-employment screening landscape is broken, governed by disjointed standards that do little to stop exploitation.

The Reality of Pre-Employment Assessment Regulation

Many candidates believe that federal or state labor laws explicitly ban or fine interview assessments longer than 15 minutes. In reality, no specific 15-minute rule exists under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or state statutes. Instead, regulatory agencies view the interview loop through specific, limited legal lenses.

As detailed below, these frameworks are rarely equipped to police the reality of candidate exploitation.

The Syndication Problem: Multiple Databases and Broken Data Pipelines

And what if the same job is reported across multiple databases? What happens when a phantom role is active on LinkedIn, Indeed, Dice, and Glassdoor simultaneously?

This is where compliance becomes a logistical nightmare. A major driver of the ghost job economy is unmanaged cross-posting. A company might intentionally post an opening on one primary channel, but third-party aggregators and job boards regularly scrape and automatically replicate that listing across dozens of other networks without the employers direct intervention.

S8877 attempts to close this loop by holding both parties accountable.

Under the bill, the employer must notify third-party entities as soon as a role is filled if they know the post was shared independently. Once notified, or if the platform independently learns the job is dead, platforms like LinkedIn or Indeed have exactly two weeks to scrub it.If an aggregator flouts this timeline, they are independently liable for the $2,500 penalty per platform.

However, because these systems are automated, data pipelines break constantly. Unless the Department of Labor issues systemic audits across all major aggregators simultaneously, employers will blame the scrapers, the scrapers will blame the employers, and the identical ghost listing will continue to live on secondary boards for months.

The New Loophole: Interview Loops as Unpaid Consulting

The framework detailed above reveals why corporate impunity thrives. Employers are not just using fake job postings to harvest data; they are actively using the interview process as a mechanism for unpaid consulting and knowledge extraction.

Following waves of intense layoffs, many organizations are suffering from a severe talent and knowledge drain. The remaining internal workforce is stretched thin, and leadership is desperate for fresh strategies.

Asking an elite candidate to design an entire codebase, architect a product strategy, or build a complex PowerPoint presentation is a highly effective, entirely free way for a company to harvest external innovation. They use your thought process and talent to patch up their internal gaps, pitching your ideas to senior leadership without ever having to onboard you.

Compounding this extraction of free consulting is an even more frustrating dynamic: many of us are seeing people who are significantly less qualified and certified than us managing the interview process. These interviewers frequently suffer from corporate insecurity and do not want to hire anyone better than them. As a result, the hiring apparatus becomes less concerned with hiring for true skills and actual talent, shifting its focus entirely toward compliance, gatekeeping, and merely filling seats with non-threatening subordinates.

The EEOC is structurally unequipped to police this reality. Since the agencys recent policy shifts, a company can legalistically justify demanding massive amounts of unpaid labor, completely insulated from discrimination scrutiny, as long as they demand it from everyone equally under a valid business purpose.

Turning Legislation into Real Change

If transparency bills like New Yorks S8877 are going to achieve their goals, regulatory bodies must look beyond the surface of the job boards. Regulating the existence of a single job listing is only half the battle.

Until the Department of Labor cracks down on cross-platform syndication, secondary financial incentives like data harvesting, and exploitative, extractive interview loops, transparency laws will remain text on a page while the underlying corporate behavior continues unchanged. Job seekers must continue to protect their own intellectual property, treat the interview loop as a strict business negotiation, and refuse to give away their expert-level insights to gatekeepers who value seat-filling over actual execution.

Advocating For The Bill

Advocating for the signing of Senate Bill S8877 is a straightforward process.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8877

You can contact Governor Hochul’s office through three primary channels: online, by mail, or by phone.

Online Form (Fastest): Use the official Governors Contact Form. Select Legislative Bill Expression or a similar topic if prompted.

By Mail: Send a physical letter to her legislative office:

The Honorable Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York State, New York State Capitol Building, Albany, NY 12224

By Phone: Call her office at (518) 474–8390 during regular business hours (Monday–Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM) to leave a message with a staff member.