Why Government Data on "Job Openings" is Typically a Lie (Perpetrated in Part by Corporations)
THE US hirings (for jobs) are decreasing. Hiring generally falls, according to the latest US government data. There's some press coverage about it this week, mostly in shallow corporate media that simply parrots the official talking points, does not bother to investigate accuracy or anything like that. They focus on "openings". But they count fake "openings" and assert there's a rise in "openings". What are they counting? Millions of fake job "openings"... meant to fake the "health" of some firms?
Millions (yes, millions!) of fake "openings" exist in the US alone, based on a survey done last year. Millions of people will apply for jobs that do not exist. That's putting aside "hirings" that are just temporary (we'll come to that later). They game the numbers by altering what's measured.
I can attest to that phenomenon from personal experience inside Sirius Open Source. I've long been aware of that because we were receiving CVs and detailed job applications from people. And we all knew there were no openings. So these people just wasted their time. They must have stumbled upon pages like this:
This is 2025. This screenshot is minutes old. Some of the above openings did exist... more than 5 years ago! Why were those not taken down or commented out? It has been ages and ages since then, so the decision to keep this misinformation online was very much conscious. The decision was made by the same crook who had robbed my colleagues and I (pension fraud).
The same can be said about how many people work there. This is how they describe "The Team". More than 90% of the people in this page are not in the company and some left it more than 5 years ago!!! The majority left the company 3+ years ago. After my wife and I left almost everybody else left too. Then the former wife of the CEO expressed support for us. She was angry about what he had done. She should know, as she too was a company insider (Director).
So, in short, Sirius Open Source lies about how many people work there (it also counts "associates" as staff; some work for the company a few days a year, maybe not even that!) and also still PRETENDS there are job openings! There have been none for many years, but some fools might "apply" (and do in fact apply; I saw that as an insider).
I cannot speak about - or for - other companies, but I can say this with confidence about a company where I worked for nearly 12 years. I know that's not just a "Sirius" thing. MANY other companies do the same (skeleton crews and job ads). Fake, fake, fake. Be aware that the government uses fake data - fed in by such companies - to pretend the economy is fine and people without a job just don't try hard enough to find one.
One anecdote I am 100% certain about is that here in the UK some places hire people on lousy 3-month contracts, knowing in advance (and even openly admitting) there's no prospect of retention. In other words, they advertise job openings, but they know upfront that those are 3-month "gigs", not proper jobs with holiday pay or job security. They receive favours from the government (e.g. tax breaks) based on the pretences of being "job creators" and they "rotate" the staff often enough (months apart) to pretend they've hired many people and have many "openings" all the time.
"It's not new for Walmart to just post jobs it doesn't have open figuring people quit or get fired so fast that putting them up and taking them down would be a waste of time," Ryan explains (he worked there). "If you don't get a call, there's your clue. They want it to be your time you wasted, not theirs. They also have a very long "personality test" designed by psychiatrists. It's like 100 questions and it decides whether to trash your application based on this as well. It has a lot of trick and rephrased and badly worded questions so that they can discriminate against non-English speakers and people of lower intelligence who can't figure out immediately what the question actually asks. Even McDonald's does this now, and it's basically designed so they can outsource discrimination to a company that "helps hire better employees"." █