A frozen monthly edition: the figures on this page will not change. The newest edition is always at alion.io/data/ghost-jobs.

39.9%
up for more than 90 days
12%
up for more than a year
16.5%
carry ghost-job signals
62 days
median age of a live posting

Key findings

  • 39.9% of live postings have been on the employer's own site for more than 90 days, 23.5% for more than six months and 12% for more than a year. The median posting is 62 days old.
  • 16.5% carry ghost-job signals: open far longer than the employer usually takes to fill a role and reposted, or sitting on a board where most roles have gone stale.
  • Counting every platform, including those that reset a posting's date when it is reposted, the floor is 26.5% over 90 days and 9.3% with ghost signals, across 675,788 postings.
  • Entry-level postings carry ghost signals 2.0 times as often as senior ones (20.8% against 10.5%).
  • Staffing agencies: 30.5% of their postings carry ghost signals, against 15.2% of employers hiring for themselves.
  • Postings that state a salary are less likely to carry ghost signals: 12.3% against 18.8% for postings without one.
  • Among the 20 largest markets, postings stay up longest in Germany (53.8% older than 90 days, median 106 days) and shortest in Brazil (27.9%); the United States sits at 38.2%.
  • Technology roles: 40.5% older than 90 days, 11.9% with ghost signals, median age 65 days.

How long postings stay up

The age of every live posting, from the date the employer first published it to the day of measurement. Postings on platforms that publish the original date (294,796 postings).

By role family

Role familyPostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
Sales 38,319 7,689
41.7%
 12.7%
18.3%
 65 d
Field & Service 29,049 4,051
45.8%
 17.8%
23.6%
 77 d
Backend 21,370 5,694
46.2%
 13%
12%
 78 d
Industrial Engineering 18,212 3,861
40.6%
 10%
15.6%
 65 d
Marketing 16,509 5,420
31.4%
 7.3%
9.6%
 48 d
HR 15,211 3,742
34.6%
 12.6%
18.8%
 47 d
Management 14,356 4,693
37.9%
 9.8%
15%
 57 d
Operations 14,354 4,147
39%
 10.4%
20%
 61 d
Finance 13,597 4,485
32.4%
 8%
12.7%
 48 d
Administrative 11,909 3,535
42.5%
 20.6%
28.1%
 62 d
Early Careers 9,223 2,894
42.7%
 18.1%
17.6%
 64 d
Customer Success 8,928 3,088
40.6%
 15.8%
21.3%
 62 d
Product 8,596 3,615
35.1%
 5.9%
8.9%
 57 d
AI/ML 7,386 2,776
47.5%
 10%
12.7%
 83 d
DevOps 6,909 2,868
40.3%
 9.3%
14%
 65 d
Solutions 6,657 2,437
36.4%
 7%
10.8%
 58 d
Legal 6,573 2,094
34.4%
 7.1%
15.6%
 55 d
Data Science 5,168 2,205
42.9%
 11.5%
15.2%
 70 d
Leadership 5,038 2,586
34.7%
 5.5%
8.8%
 57 d
Education 4,969 604
43.6%
 17.3%
22.3%
 67 d
Design 3,927 2,156
34.3%
 7.7%
10.4%
 50 d
Security 3,821 1,646
32.7%
 7.1%
8.8%
 55 d
Analytics 3,683 1,803
23%
 1.9%
4.8%
 41 d
Hardware 3,026 806
44.3%
 8.9%
12.3%
 75 d
Enterprise Apps 2,318 790
47.2%
 14.4%
25.2%
 83 d
Communications 2,028 1,027
30.3%
 7.5%
7.8%
 48 d
Support 1,997 1,237
31.4%
 7.3%
11.2%
 44 d
QA 1,992 1,125
36.2%
 9.1%
11.6%
 56 d
Frontend 1,491 937
53.3%
 20.8%
18.4%
 105 d
Mobile 1,067 523
47.2%
 16.9%
16.2%
 78 d

By country

CountryPostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
United States 131,931 10,220
38.2%
 10%
15.4%
 58 d
Canada 18,339 2,266
37.5%
 10.6%
14.6%
 57 d
United Kingdom 15,753 2,417
34.5%
 11.8%
14.3%
 51 d
Germany 14,106 2,097
53.8%
 21.8%
26.5%
 106 d
India 10,334 1,223
39.8%
 8.5%
13.8%
 63 d
Netherlands 6,178 950
47.6%
 15.1%
20.5%
 84 d
Singapore 3,902 551
45%
 14.2%
21.1%
 77 d
France 3,822 605
42.4%
 16.2%
19.4%
 74 d
Australia 3,398 692
30.3%
 8.7%
11.3%
 43 d
Philippines 3,121 407
36.3%
 8.2%
13.5%
 55 d
Greece 2,877 271
36.8%
 10.9%
20%
 61 d
Brazil 2,720 469
27.9%
 6.2%
4.6%
 40 d
Spain 2,683 539
38.9%
 7.5%
9.5%
 63 d
Mexico 2,512 507
34.1%
 9.7%
10.7%
 49 d
Poland 2,442 525
36.8%
 8.2%
10.9%
 58 d
Colombia 2,284 483
30.2%
 9.3%
12.2%
 43 d
Israel 2,046 486
35.7%
 11.4%
10.2%
 56 d
Morocco 1,887 342
37.7%
 10.1%
11.6%
 57 d
Japan 1,761 387
53%
 12.7%
16.6%
 97 d
South Africa 1,754 258
35.2%
 5.4%
8.2%
 50 d

By employer size

Employer sizePostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
Size not known 70,935 6,757
38.7%
 9.1%
15.5%
 61 d
11-50 employees 11,203 2,050
44.8%
 16.1%
14.3%
 72 d
51-200 employees 42,159 4,638
37.8%
 9.9%
13%
 57 d
201-500 employees 32,187 2,009
36.2%
 9.1%
15.3%
 56 d
501-1000 employees 34,439 904
35%
 7.7%
10.8%
 56 d
1001-5000 employees 76,795 852
39.9%
 12.1%
16%
 62 d

By employer type

Employer typePostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
Direct employer 269,470 17,539
39.3%
 11.5%
15.2%
 62 d
Staffing agency 25,326 595
46%
 16.2%
30.5%
 73 d

By seniority

SeniorityPostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
Level not stated 110,124 12,674
44.4%
 16.3%
22.9%
 71 d
Intern 7,445 2,394
38.1%
 14.7%
18.5%
 49 d
Junior 34,177 7,548
40.2%
 16.9%
20.8%
 58 d
Mid-level 25,158 6,693
37.8%
 8.9%
11.9%
 60 d
Senior 67,108 10,573
36.5%
 7.2%
10.5%
 57 d
Staff / principal 13,933 3,698
39.1%
 7.3%
8.9%
 63 d
Lead 21,463 6,031
36.7%
 7.2%
11.3%
 60 d
Head / director 15,388 5,375
31.1%
 4.7%
7.5%
 50 d

By work mode

Work modePostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
On-site 189,007 13,836
42.3%
 13.5%
18.9%
 67 d
Remote 53,342 7,256
36.1%
 9.4%
13.2%
 55 d
Hybrid 52,438 6,487
35.1%
 9.1%
11.2%
 55 d

By pay in the advert

Pay in the advertPostingsEmployersUp over 90 daysOver a yearGhost signalsMedian age
No salary stated 190,994 14,936
42.3%
 14.1%
18.8%
 68 d
Salary stated 103,802 9,262
35.4%
 8.1%
12.3%
 54 d

What is measured

  • Population. Every live posting Alion reads from an employer's own applicant tracking system - 675,788 postings from 37,706 employers in 194 countries - whose board was read again within the last 48 hours and still listed it. "Live" means the employer's own site was still publishing the role on the day of measurement.
  • Age. From the date the employer first published the posting, as its hiring system states it, to the day of measurement.
  • Why two figures. Some platforms reset a posting's date whenever it is reposted or refreshed, or publish no date at all, which makes a years-old role look new. Comparisons on this page therefore use only the platforms that publish the original date (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Workable, Recruitee, BambooHR, Gem, Breezy, Rippling, Deel, Traffit, Personio: 294,796 postings). Across all platforms the figures are a floor: 26.5% of postings older than 90 days and 9.3% with ghost signals.
  • Ghost signals. A posting is flagged when it has stayed open past three times the employer's own median time to fill (never less than 90 days) and, in addition, was taken down and put back up, or sits on a board where most roles have been open over 90 days - or when the same role has been reposted three times or more. Age alone is never enough. A ghost signal says the posting behaves like one that is not being filled; it does not say the employer acted in bad faith. Full rules: methodology.
  • Publication floors. A slice is shown only with at least 1,000 postings from at least 30 employers, and only when no single employer accounts for more than 15% of it. Individual employers are not named.
  • Limits. The sample is the employers Alion tracks - weighted toward technology and toward companies that run their own hiring system - not every job ad in the world. Role families, levels and countries are classified from the posting itself and can be wrong on individual rows; the shares are robust to that, a single row is not.

Use and cite

The figures and the downloads are published under CC BY 4.0: use them freely, with a credit and a link to the edition.

Alion Ghost Jobs Index, September 2026. https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-09 (CC BY 4.0)

Data: CSV · JSON · Hugging Face · Charts: headline, age, seniority, countries (PNG, 1200×675)

To embed the headline chart:

<a href="https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-09"><img src="https://alion.io/images/data/alion-ghost-jobs-index-2026-09-headline.png" alt="Alion Ghost Jobs Index, September 2026" width="1200" height="675"></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-09">Alion Ghost Jobs Index</a>, September 2026</p>

Press and data requests, custom cuts for a country, role or industry: [email protected].

Editions