Career catfishing refers to the practice of new employees deliberately not showing up for work on their first official day of employment, which emerged in the mid-2020s.
The term is derived from catfishing, which refers to creating a fake identity or online persona with the intent of deception.
The term "career catfishing" describes the practice of accepting a job offer with no intention of starting the position, thus deliberately failing to appear for their first day of work and knowingly misleading employers during the hiring process.
This phenomenon emerged in the mid-2020s alongside other workplace trends such as "coffee badging" and "quiet quitting" that generally represent increased distrust and antagonism in employee-employer relationships.
[1][3][4] Business research indicated that its prevalence among Generation Z workers served to signal their opposition to multiple interviews and long response times from their employers.