Social Media
stated on December 6, 2024 in social media posts:

UnitedHealthcare posted a job opening for a CEO 24 hours after its CEO was killed.

Economy Fake news Health Care Jobs Social Media

By Sofia Ahmed
December 9, 2024

UnitedHealthcare did not advertise for a new CEO after Brian Thompson’s killing

If your time is short

There were no UnitedHealthcare job listings for a new CEO on LinkedIn, Indeed or the company’s career page.
Google searches for news reports about UnitedHealthcare posting a job listing for a new CEO, yielded only fact-checks.
In a company disclosure, UnitedHealthcare said it paid Thompson $10.2 million in 2023, including stock options and awards, much higher than the supposed LinkedIn posts advertised.

See the sources for this fact-check

A gunman stunned the country when he killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4 outside a midtown Manhattan hotel. Five days later, police arrested Luigi Mangione in Altoona, Pennsylvania, naming him a person of interest.

Following the shooting, social media users shared what appeared to be a job listing to replace the CEO.

Facebook and Instagram users shared a screenshot of a purported LinkedIn job posting Dec. 5 and Dec. 6 for a CEO at UnitedHealthcare in Minnetonka, Minnesota, with a salary range of $300,000 to $450,000. A Threads post showed what looked like another UnitedHealthcare CEO Indeed job posting for a $4,903 hourly salary. (UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthCare’s parent company, is based in Minnetonka.)

Figure 1: False claim, screenshot of UnitedHealthcare LinkedIn posting, 12-5-2024

Screenshot from Facebook

These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

We searched UnitedHealthcare’s LinkedIn and Indeed job postings, but found no listings for a CEO. There were also no job postings for CEO on the company’s careers page. A Google search for reports about the company posting ads for a new CEO yielded only fact-checks.

We contacted a UnitedHealthcare spokesperson to ask whether the CEO job postings were real, but received no immediate response.

According to a UnitedHealthcare disclosure, Thompson’s total pay in 2023, including stock options and awards, was $10.2 million, with a base salary of $1 million. This is much higher than the $450,000 annual salary advertised in the supposed LinkedIn posts. The purported Indeed listing’s hourly salary of $4,903 would equal about $10 million a year, closer to Thompson’s actual salary. But UnitedHealthcare does not pay its CEOs hourly, per its disclosure.

Most companies also don’t hire CEOs through online job listings. Thompson worked in leadership positions at UnitedHealthcare for 17 years before becoming CEO in 2021.

We rate the claim that UnitedHealthcare posted a CEO job opening 24 hours after its CEO was killed False.