Ghost Jobs Report, September 2026
Measured across 607,050 postings open on 15 applicant tracking systems, read directly from each employer's own careers site. Age uses the date the employer published, available on 95.0% of postings. The median open posting is 36 days old.
Computed September 23, 2026 from a sweep that began August 24, 2026, 29 days earlier. Closure figures are bounded by that window and say so below.
163,057
postings open more than 90 days
28.3% of the dated postings. 94,106 have been up more than 180 days.
36 days
median age of an open posting
Half the catalog was published more recently than this, by the employer's own date.
14.6%
of closed postings came down within a week
13,013 of 88,895 closures in the last 30 days. A posting that disappears in days was real.
4.2%
of closed postings were reposted within 30 days
3,915 of 94,333: same employer, same role, back as a new posting after the close.
How old the open postings are
Every dated open posting, by the time since the employer published it. The two right hand bands are what this report calls stale.
- Under 30 days
- 45.1%260,305
By category
Hospitality postings sit the longest: 43.9% have been open more than 90 days, median 65 days. Healthcare turns over fastest at 19.7%.
| Category | Share over 90 days | Median age | Open postings | Salary stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hospitality | 43.9% | 65 days | 23,639 | 33.0% |
| Education | 37.4% | 56 days | 8,928 | 51.5% |
| Other | 35.3% | 48 days | 61,538 | 31.0% |
| Engineering | 32.3% | 46 days | 69,017 | 32.5% |
| Design | 31.5% | 47 days | 4,733 | 32.6% |
| Skilled trades | 29.5% | 37 days | 44,283 | 44.2% |
| Product | 29.4% | 44 days | 6,680 | 39.0% |
| Operations | 29.3% | 37 days | 40,041 | 34.4% |
| HR & people | 29.2% | 35 days | 6,323 | 32.0% |
| Logistics | 27.3% | 30 days | 28,881 | 48.6% |
| Customer support | 26.6% | 32 days | 10,023 | 46.1% |
| Marketing | 25.9% | 37 days | 12,263 | 34.6% |
| Sales | 25.5% | 34 days | 51,099 | 40.7% |
| Data | 23.6% | 34 days | 13,205 | 32.9% |
| Finance | 23.5% | 33 days | 20,517 | 35.1% |
| Legal | 22.0% | 34 days | 8,367 | 39.4% |
| Retail | 20.1% | 24 days | 41,677 | 51.0% |
| Healthcare | 19.7% | 29 days | 68,283 | 47.6% |
By applicant tracking system
The system an employer posts through says a lot about how its postings age. Lever boards carry the largest stale share at 48.2%; Workday the smallest at 17.2%. Pinpoint, Personio, Y Combinator publish no posting date, so their age cannot be measured and is not guessed.
| System | Share over 90 days | Median age | Open postings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lever | 48.2% | 83 days | 1,871 |
| BambooHR | 47.9% | 79 days | 64,151 |
| Recruitee | 45.3% | 82 days | 596 |
| Teamtailor | 42.3% | 64 days | 45,698 |
| Rippling | 38.6% | 61 days | 16,339 |
| Workable | 38.2% | 51 days | 5,755 |
| Breezy | 36.7% | 55 days | 25,124 |
| Ashby | 34.8% | 54 days | 13,899 |
| Greenhouse | 32.1% | 47 days | 52,589 |
| SmartRecruiters | 27.0% | 35 days | 73,024 |
| UKG | 26.7% | 35 days | 51,130 |
| Workday | 17.2% | 26 days | 226,520 |
| Pinpoint | no posting date | no posting date | 15,691 |
| Personio | no posting date | no posting date | 11,018 |
| Y Combinator | no posting date | no posting date | 3,645 |
By country
The fifteen countries with the most open postings, by how their postings age and how often a salary is stated. The full thirty are in the CSV.
| Country | Share over 90 days | Median age | Open postings | Salary stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 26.2% | 34 days | 334,681 | 50.7% |
| United Kingdom | 26.8% | 36 days | 29,629 | 36.9% |
| Canada | 27.6% | 36 days | 21,977 | 48.8% |
| Germany | 31.7% | 54 days | 20,286 | 3.9% |
| France | 32.6% | 48 days | 19,030 | 15.9% |
| India | 25.9% | 33 days | 14,287 | 1.9% |
| Sweden | 40.9% | 51 days | 11,774 | 0.4% |
| Australia | 21.5% | 28 days | 7,872 | 14.7% |
| Spain | 34.3% | 50 days | 6,367 | 9.3% |
| Singapore | 26.3% | 37 days | 4,792 | 4.2% |
| Brazil | 27.4% | 39 days | 4,153 | 13.8% |
| Mexico | 29.7% | 41 days | 3,858 | 17.2% |
| Netherlands | 39.2% | 64 days | 3,525 | 27.9% |
| Poland | 28.8% | 42 days | 3,516 | 4.2% |
| Italy | 25.8% | 29 days | 3,446 | 42.7% |
The employers with the most open postings
The twenty employers with the most postings open on their own careers site, and how many of those have been up more than 90 days. A long open posting is not proof of anything on its own: some roles are evergreen, some employers hire in volume all year. This table reports the rate and links every name to its postings so you can check them at the source. Employers appear above 50 open postings only.
| Employer | Open postings | Share over 90 days | Median age |
|---|---|---|---|
| O'Reilly Auto Parts | 14,320 | 45.6% | 77 days |
| CVS Health | 14,195 | 5.1% | 22 days |
| Lowe's | 12,225 | 0.0% | 22 days |
| TJX Companies | 10,157 | 14.0% | 22 days |
| Accenture | 4,270 | 3.4% | 13 days |
| Whataburger Restaurants | 4,184 | 83.9% | 239 days |
| JLL | 3,766 | 0.0% | 15 days |
| PACS Group | 2,786 | 1.1% | 22 days |
| AdventHealth | 2,778 | 0.0% | 9 days |
| Genuine Parts Company | 2,762 | 0.0% | 22 days |
| ABB | 2,757 | 5.2% | 21 days |
| Kohl's | 2,670 | 0.0% | 23 days |
| Curtiss-Wright | 2,667 | 0.0% | 23 days |
| Dick's Sporting Goods | 2,665 | 0.0% | 23 days |
| Hitachi | 2,649 | 0.0% | 26 days |
| Mercy | 2,634 | 0.0% | 28 days |
| American Logistics Authority | 2,597 | 100.0% | 308 days |
| Booz Allen Hamilton | 2,218 | 0.0% | 26 days |
| GE Vernova | 2,076 | 10.9% | 21 days |
| MUSC | 2,071 | 20.2% | 37 days |
Closures and reposts
- 88,895
postings removed from their employer's site in the last 30 days
14.6% came down within a week of publishing and 30.8% within two.
- 24 days
median time from publishing to removal
Over postings that closed in the last 90 days. Ninety percent closed within 113 days. We have watched for 29 days, so the true medians can only be longer; this is a lower bound.
- 4.2%
of closed postings came back within 30 days
3,915 postings closed and the same employer published the same role again. A further 4,576 open postings were closed and reopened in place.
Definitions and method
- Stale
- A posting the employer's own careers site has shown open for more than 90 days, counted from the date the employer published. This report never calls a single posting a ghost job. It reports rates.
- Repost
- A posting that closes and comes back within 30 days as a new posting for the same role at the same employer, matched on the normalized title and description.
- Where the data comes from
- Unlisted reads the public APIs of the applicant tracking systems employers post through, board by board, every few hours. Nothing is scraped from job boards and nothing is estimated. Every posting counted here was open on its employer's site when the report was computed.
- What it cannot say
- Whether an employer that keeps a posting up is still interviewing, and how long the same postings stay on LinkedIn or Indeed after they leave the source. We only see the source. Closure times are bounded by how long we have been watching, and the report says so wherever it prints one.
Quoting this report
Free to quote and reproduce with a link to this page. Suggested citation:
Unlisted, Ghost Jobs Report, September 2026. unlisted.careers/ghost-jobs/report/2026-09
Questions about the method, or a figure you want cut differently: hello@unlisted.careers.
The job boards show you what was posted. Unlisted shows you what is still open on the employer's own site, and tells you when it last checked.