Even after a job interview, many candidates never hear back about whether they got the job. Now, lawmakers in Ontario, Canada, are stepping in to stop that.
Starting Jan. 1, companies in Ontario with at least 25 employees will have to inform candidates about their status within 45 days of a job interview. Employers also will have to disclose whether a vacancy is actively being filled and whether artificial intelligence is being used to screen and select candidates.
Ontario’s Labor Minister David Piccini told the Toronto Star last year, when the legislation was first introduced, that it’s simply common courtesy to let applicants know when they don’t get the job. Employers who fail to comply may be fined as much as C$100,000 ($72,200), according to Daryn Jeffries, an employment lawyer in Toronto, though first offenses probably will result in warnings or lower fines.
The move is part of a broader push to bring transparency to a hiring process many applicants say is broken — and one that may reshape how companies advertise jobs, manage candidate pipelines and use AI. Some employers warn the regulatory burden will increase costs.
Almost two-thirds of job applicants in the U.S. have reported receiving no response after an interview, according to a July workplace report by hiring platform Greenhouse. And 27 percent said they never heard back after a final-round interview.
Similar legislation is currently under consideration in the U.S. A proposal in the New Jersey state legislature would fine employers up to $5,000 for repeatedly failing to give interviewed candidates a clear decision timeline. They also would have to remove job listings within two weeks of filling the role and disclose when they post ads for roles that don’t exist, often referred to as a “ghost job.”
New Jersey employers have strongly opposed the bill on the grounds of higher costs and “impracticality.” The New Jersey Business and Industry Association said the two-week window to remove listings would make it harder to hire for high-turnover roles, particularly in the retail and service industries, and the mandate to provide a fixed timeline doesn’t reflect how hiring cycles can vary.
State lawmakers in Kentucky and California have introduced bills to ban ghost jobs. While the Kentucky bill failed to gain traction, the California bill is currently under committee review.
Anessa Fike, a professional human-resources consultant, said that ghosting is often a symptom of overwhelmed, understaffed recruiting teams. Many companies have downsized these teams in recent years, she said, leaving candidates in the dark.
Roughly one in five listings posted on Greenhouse is a ghost job, according to December 2024 analysis. In Canada, roughly 14 percent of job listings in the second quarter of 2025 fell into that category. Companies often keep such listings to maintain a steady candidate pool for times they need to hire quickly, Fike said.
The prevalence of ghosting adds to a widespread disillusionment with the job search process, particularly among younger candidates, and that’s led lawmakers to push for change.
Eric Thompson, 53, co-founded an advocacy group pushing for federal legislation after noticing how many friends were confronted with the same wall of silence after applying for jobs. Since he was laid off from a cybersecurity startup nine months ago, he has submitted — and meticulously tracked — more than 3,000 job applications. Of those, just five led to interviews and only 167 led to any sort of response, he said.
“If I’m applying for 40 jobs a week and half of them are ghosts, then I’ve wasted 20 hours of work a week,” Thompson said.
Copyright 2025 Bloomberg.
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