State laws mandating the information that businesses must put in employment ads are poised for expansion to address “ghost jobs” and AI in hiring, after five years of focusing largely on pay transparency.
The New York Senate passed a bill (S8877) April 28 that would require employers to include an expected timeframe for hiring or declare if they are only collecting resumes for potential future positions. It’s an attempt to address rising concerns over “ghost” job postings, which allegedly aim to gather applicant data or give the appearance a company is hiring when it isn’t. The Democratic-sponsored bill now awaits state House review.
New Jersey lawmakers are considering a similar measure (S2136), and California and Kentucky proposed comparable bills in recent legislative sessions.
The proposals add a new wrinkle to spreading state and local regulations on job advertisements, which Colorado kick-started in 2021 by requiring disclosure of pay ranges. Other states are also following Colorado on employer requirements around application deadlines and notifications to applicants when AI tools are used in hiring, though the state’s sweeping AI law might not ultimately take effect.
The measures represent “the next phase” of regulating job advertisements, “moving from pay transparency to hiring transparency,” said Stacey A. Bastone, a Jackson Lewis PC attorney who advises employers.
The Pennsylvania legislature is considering a catch-all bill (HB 2321) requiring job ads to include salary ranges, a hiring timeline or disclosure that the company isn’t actively hiring, and information about the employers’ use of AI tools in hiring.
Requiring specific details in postings is still a relatively new concept, Bastone said. Private-sector employers historically haven’t had many legal obligations around advertising positions, except bans on discriminatory language under civil rights laws.
The bills addressing AI use and ghost jobs could be on track to spread much like pay transparency laws, she said.
“We’ve seen this before,” Bastone said. “It just takes another one or two” states passing laws “and then it kind of catches on from there.”
Persistent Expansion
At least 11 states plus Washington, D.C., require businesses to include a salary range in job ads, and that list is growing. Virginia and Maine recently passed pay transparency measures that will take effect in July, and Delaware’s law is set to go into force in September 2027. Connecticut and Michigan are considering similar bills.
A handful of states also have begun requiring notices about use of AI decision-making tools in hiring, although not necessarily within a job ad. These include laws in Colorado and Illinois and privacy regulations in California, as well as New York City’s automated employment decision tools ordinance. The Trump administration is pushing to limit states’ authority to regulate AI, including with litigation against Colorado’s law.
Mandates for employers to disclose AI use seem to be gaining momentum in the states, and with good intentions about improving hiring process transparency, said Matthew Jensen, senior director for government relations and public policy at job posting platform Indeed.com. But the reality of the ways employers use technology makes it difficult for lawmakers to achieve meaningful transparency.
“Hardly ever, if ever at all, is a single AI product or tool levied in an isolated fashion,” he said. “There is a continuous interconnectivity of AI and non-AI tools” used in recruiting, job searches, and interviews, which complicates the ability to give meaningful disclosures.
“Collectively as an industry we’re still working through what that looks like for it to be most effective,” Jensen said.
Among the few states that have passed AI transparency laws or regulations, the details remain murky. An Illinois law took effect Jan. 1 requiring employers to inform workers about their use of AI tools in making employment decisions, but the state’s labor department has yet to issue regulations providing details of when and how those disclosures should be provided.
Colorado’s closely watched algorithmic discrimination law, passed as SB 205 in 2024, includes disclosure requirements. But state lawmakers are considering a significant rewrite of the law before its effective date of June 30, and a federal court is considering whether to block it after Elon Musk’s company xAI and the US Justice Department challenged it as unconstitutional.
‘Ghost Job Ads’
The newest wave of job ad legislation aims at a phenomenon job hunters online have criticized as advertising “ghost jobs.”
A 2024 Resume Builder survey of over 1,600 hiring managers found 40% admitted their companies had posted a fake job listing within the past year.
“When these sites put out jobs, people deserve to know that it’s actually a real job,” said New York state Sen. Christopher Ryan (D), who’s sponsoring a pair of related bills this session.
One of them (S9208) would mandate employers notify third-party job posting websites once an advertised job has been filled or the ad is otherwise inactive, and then the job site would have to remove the inactive ad within seven days.
The issue of job postings that don’t lead to hiring has gotten attention among some members of Congress over the past two years. Still, a Congressional Research Service report last year noted it’s difficult to quantify how widespread the problem is, since no official government data tracks the prevalence of inactive or bogus job postings.
The implication that employers aren’t being honest about their intentions isn’t necessarily fair or accurate, even if a posting doesn’t spur an immediate hire, Bastone said.
“I work with a lot of employers, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons why they need to build a pipeline,” she said. “Sometimes a role may be approved, and then it may be paused. Headcount requirements change. Budgets change.”
For now, employers’ job posting compliance efforts remain largely focused on pay transparency, with the proposed AI use and hiring timeline requirements not yet raising concerns for businesses, Bastone said.
Larger, multistate companies in particular are “trying to figure out whether to move to national compliance or do this on state-by-state basis,” she said.
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