Looking for a Job in 2026: Job Market Realities, Ghost Jobs, and Flan
Those of us who work in vocational rehabilitation know there’s nothing quite like seeing an individual move from a workplace injury or job displacement into meaningful work that fits their abilities . Getting there takes dedication and determination.
Part of our job is to help individuals navigate the search. And if we’re going to do that well, we need to understand what the job market currently looks like.
COVID, combined with advances in technology, changed how many people look for work. Since 2020, online hiring tools and AI have kept changing how employers find, screen, and communicate with candidates. How different is it? Well, let’s talk about dessert.
Algorithms and Flan
If you’re on LinkedIn, you’ve probably received a message from a recruiter that seemed personal at first glance. Some recruiters use AI tools to draft outreach based on information in a candidate’s online profile. Cameron Mattis decided to test what could happen when one of those tools read his. (You can read more about it here).
In 2025, Mattis added an instruction to his LinkedIn bio, telling an AI tool to include a flan recipe in its message to him. Recruiters’ outreach started to arrive with a flan recipe. And it worked. Along with messages trying to connect him with various opportunities, flan recipes were embedded in the messages. Side note - I tried this for lasagna recipes (it sounded like a good dinner option at the time) and did not get any recipes embedded in messages, but I did see a significant downturn in the number of messages received (usually three to five per week to two in the last two months).
While it's funny, it illustrates a real challenge: a message that looks individually written may not be. Job seekers also have to watch for fraudulent recruiting messages, which can be used for phishing, identity theft, or financial scams. An AI-written message is not necessarily a scam, but knowing how to assess contact has become part of the job search.We’ll come back to what that means for vocational rehabilitation clients. First, let’s look at the broader hiring landscape.
Job Market Realities
Applying for work can involve more effort than many people remember. An online listing does not always represent a position an employer is actively trying to fill. A few figures from recent years help show why job seekers may find the process frustrating:
In a 2024 survey of 753 U.S. recruiters, 81% said their employer posts openings for positions that don't exist or have already been filled. These are often called ghost jobs. Research from Greenhouse and Huntr found that an estimated 18% to 22% of all job postings are actually ghost jobs.
Employment platform Simplify reported that its users submitted an average of 45 applications per month in May 2025, compared with 22 per month in the prior year, according to data reported by Fortune.
In the third quarter of 2025, fewer than 4% of applications tracked by Huntr sourced through LinkedIn or Indeed resulted in an interview. In that dataset, applications sourced through Google’s job search portal had the highest interview rate, at 11.21%.
Bureau of Labor Statistics tracking shows that the average duration of unemployment benefits has consistently been at or above 24 weeks over the last two years. The long-term unemployed (those jobless 27 weeks or more) consistently account for just over a quarter of all unemployed.
What This Means for Job Seekers
This is a tough hiring market.
Most of the job seekers I work with are often changing career paths and’t had to do a job search in many years (if not decades). This means that they (1) may lose access to their network and (2) have to learn to search in a new market. One’s personal network remains the best opportunity for finding employment. If that no longer exists, online job searching or direct reach to employers becomes the next option.
Today’s application process often feels like a completely foreign environment because it differs drastically from what they last navigated. Online forms, resume screening systems, recruiter messages, and unfamiliar job boards may all require skills the person hasn't used before.
The barriers will differ from one individual to another. A useful placement plan considers not only the person’s experience, skills, restrictions documented by their providers, technology skills, and local labor market. It also considers how they are searching. Are they finding suitable openings? Can they complete the applications? Do they know how to follow up or recognize a suspicious message? Can they get their application past the application tracking software (ATS)?
That is why I favor a coaching approach to job placement assistance. At Kelsea Mills & Associates, this means that we teach our job seekers how to practically and efficiently navigate the current hiring market. Encouragement matters, but job seekers also need practical guidance through the process.
The goal is to help each person conduct a more informed, effective search in the job market they face now - flan recipes, ghost jobs, and all.
The best part is, once you understand how hiring practices work, we are seeing strong success. In the past 18 months, 86% of our job seekers received employment offers within three months.
To learn more about vocational rehabilitation services in Oklahoma or expert witness services throughout the U.S., contact admin@kelseamills.com to schedule a call with Kelsea Mills.
About Kelsea Mills, MRC, CRC, CVE, CEAS I
Kelsea Mills is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor, Certified Vocational Evaluation Specialist, and Certified Ergonomic Assessment Specialist. She is the founder of Kelsea Mills & Associates. With over 18 years of experience, she provides targeted vocational evaluations, earning capacity analysis, vocational rehabilitation, return-to-work planning, vocational case management services, and testimony in Workers’ Compensation, Civil, and Federal litigation matters.
Ms. Mills serves as a nationwide vocational expert witness, consulting with legal teams nationwide to deliver comprehensive loss-of-earning capacity evaluations and expert testimony for personal injury, medical malpractice, and employment law cases.
She serves on the board of the Vocational Evaluators and Career Assessment Professionals (VECAP) and is a member of the International Association of Rehabilitation Professionals (IARP) and the American Board of Vocational Experts (ABVE).
