This seems analogous to the following. A company asks users to fill out an online survey in exchange for participation in some raffle, except the company never pays out any prize. As with the job application there was never a guaranteed reward, but it's still easy to see the damage. The company induced to you to provide them with an economically valuable asset (filled out survey/application) for which you expected a fair chance at a reward. It seems plausible that you could claim damages at least up to the expected value.

Except a job offer is generally non binding, so they could interview you, offer the job, then withdraw it.

So never being offered a job because it doesn't exist doesn't lose you anything.

>So never being offered a job because it doesn't exist doesn't lose you anything.

Ah well look, if the job posting was just to collect resumes with zero intention to actually hire, you did lose some things:

- actual time spent applying to a job that was never open - emotional damage on focus to try to get this job - loss of free market value of your data (company profited from this data, when you could have profited from it) - damages for acquisition of your personal data under a fraudulent basis (when otherwise, maybe you did not want your data shared)

Spotted the HR worker posting ghost jobs

In the UK at least Fraud doesn't require any damages, just an intent to gain something of value on the criminals side.

Your time might be worthless but mine isn't.

Yeah, you go ahead and sue someone for the few minutes of your time it took to send in a application for a fake job. Then you'll really see what wasting time looks like.

But this is part of the problem with crimes and enforcement in the modern age: sure, I might have only wasted a few minutes of my time. But I'm just one of hundreds or thousands of people who were tricked into wasting that time, by this one act.

Multiply this across all the fraudulent job postings, and it really starts to add up.

It's clear (to me, at least) that we need better laws to handle this sort of wide-but-shallow attack on people. It's analogous to spam.

I recently learned of [1], which is a good example of "too small for me to sue" but still worth going through it collectively.

1: https://www.canadianbreadsettlement.ca/

> Yeah, you go ahead and sue someone for the few minutes of your time it took to send in a application for a fake job. Then you'll really see what wasting time looks like.

1. That is exactly what class actions are for, because small damages multiplied by many people are big damages.

2. That's also why we need punitive damages, so someone can't get away with unlawful actions by deliberately coasting along under the threshold where it makes sense to sue. For instance, IIRC, you can collect something like $5000 from someone who doesn't put you on their "do not call list" when requested. That amount has nothing to do with the value of the "few minutes of your time it took to" answer a telemarketing call.

You are missing a point. The only thing it really does is force people to pursue other forms as online channel is too polluted for anyone with sense/options/skill ( or all of the above ). So it leaves desperate, optionless, those without skills and everyone else who fell through the cracks. Another system undermined for no clear benefit. It does not benefit the employer. It does not benefit the employee. It does benefit some data brokers.. and only then for a bit until the rest of the market catches up..

But was it worth it?