Thats a good point, I have known a number of startup companies that have many "open positions" listed not because they're hiring but because of how it appeared to potential VCs . They want to appear to be a growing, valid, healthy company ...
I could see a two-track system: Bonded postings that get counted in official statistics, and "informal" postings that amount to wishes. horses, etc.
Bonding agents would drive down the cost of binding to a pretty small amount and/or enable bonding requirements to rise so that it is prohibitive to lie about open positions.
I would not be surprised if higher percenrage of bonded postings will be fake because all postings required for visa/greencard will be bonded and useless.
The idea behind bonding is to make it very expensive to post fake requirements. The natural result of forfeiting a bond is for your bonding costs to go way up. An H-1B is for jobs that can't be filled. If they go unfilled, the bond is lost.
Losing a bond of some tens of thousands of dollars is only justifiable for truly high-value positions, and that's what H1-B is supposed to be for, not phalaxes of warm bodies for contract shops.
