Ghost Jobs Index · October 2026

4 in 10 postings on employers' own career sites have been up for more than 90 days

Measured, not surveyed: 407,585 live job postings read from 26,834 employers' own hiring systems and re-checked every 48 hours. 41% have been up for more than 90 days and 13.8% carry ghost-job signals.

Edition October 2026, measured 28 October 2026 Licence: CC BY 4.0 CSV JSON

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

41%

up for more than 90 days

12.5%

up for more than a year

13.8%

carry ghost-job signals

64 days

median age of a live posting

Since September 2026

The same 17,537 employers, measured on 23 September 2026 and again 35 days later. Comparing the same employers keeps the change about the market, not about the boards Alion added in between.

39.4% → 40.9%

up for more than 90 days (+1.5 pp)

62 → 66 days

median age of a live posting

78.3%

of postings already 90+ days old in September 2026 were still up 35 days later

36.8%

of these employers' live postings appeared after 23 September 2026

Country	Postings now	Up over 90 days, September 2026	Now	Change
United States	161,960	38.3%	40.3%	+2 pp
United Kingdom	16,704	33.9%	34.2%	+0.3 pp
Germany	16,302	55.4%	56.5%	+1.1 pp
Canada	10,713	34%	37.8%	+3.8 pp
India	10,067	38.6%	38.8%	+0.2 pp
Netherlands	6,722	47.2%	49%	+1.8 pp
France	4,201	42.2%	43.8%	+1.6 pp
Singapore	4,148	44.4%	44.2%	−0.2 pp
Australia	3,647	30.1%	30.3%	+0.2 pp
Greece	3,616	36.2%	38.8%	+2.6 pp
Philippines	3,475	35.3%	41.1%	+5.8 pp
Brazil	2,948	27.5%	30.2%	+2.7 pp
Spain	2,831	39.3%	38.7%	−0.6 pp
Mexico	2,418	33.3%	35.4%	+2.1 pp
Japan	2,093	52.8%	52.3%	−0.5 pp
United Arab Emirates	1,698	42.6%	43%	+0.4 pp
Ireland	1,671	37.9%	36.3%	−1.6 pp
Portugal	1,401	36.3%	34.7%	−1.6 pp
Egypt	1,400	44.7%	46%	+1.3 pp
Belgium	1,368	49.7%	49.7%	0 pp

Key findings

41% of live postings have been on the employer's own site for more than 90 days, 24.7% for more than six months and 12.5% for more than a year. The median posting is 64 days old.
Same employers, 35 days apart: among the 17,537 employers measured in both the September 2026 and this edition, the share of postings up for more than 90 days went from 39.4% to 40.9%, and the median posting from 62 to 66 days old.
Old postings stay up: of the 116,224 postings that were already more than 90 days old at the September 2026 measurement, 78.3% were still listed 35 days later (66.6% of all the postings live then).
13.8% 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 22.1% over 90 days and 7.1% with ghost signals, across 1,872,845 postings.
Entry-level postings carry ghost signals 2.1 times as often as senior ones (17.9% against 8.7%).
Staffing agencies: 22.1% of their postings carry ghost signals, against 13.2% of employers hiring for themselves.
Postings that state a salary are less likely to carry ghost signals: 11.8% against 14.8% for postings without one.
Among the 20 largest markets, postings stay up longest in Germany (56.7% older than 90 days, median 117 days) and shortest in Australia (29.3%); the United States sits at 39.8%.
Technology roles: 40.5% older than 90 days, 10.3% with ghost signals, median age 67 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 (407,585 postings).

29.6%

Up to 30 days

18%

31-60 days

11.5%

61-90 days

16.2%

91-180 days

12.3%

181-365 days

12.5%

Over a year

By role family

Role family	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
Sales	53,886	10,510	43.5%	15.1%	13.2%	70 d
Field & Service	41,210	6,060	46.3%	16.8%	19.9%	77 d
Industrial Engineering	27,162	5,592	40.6%	9.7%	12.2%	67 d
Backend	22,500	6,916	44.5%	9.8%	9.1%	76 d
Marketing	20,973	7,063	32.3%	8.3%	8.8%	50 d
Management	20,387	6,576	38.8%	9.1%	14.1%	62 d
HR	20,185	4,730	38.5%	15.2%	17.3%	60 d
Operations	19,298	5,545	37.3%	9.1%	14.4%	61 d
Finance	17,931	6,044	32.4%	8.3%	10.7%	49 d
Administrative	14,951	4,942	40.9%	18.1%	13%	58 d
Early Careers	13,385	4,547	44.7%	19.1%	15.4%	70 d
Product	11,280	4,451	32.1%	5%	6.7%	55 d
Customer Success	10,225	3,675	41.9%	16.6%	13.5%	63 d
Solutions	9,724	3,420	39.1%	7.1%	10.1%	67 d
AI/ML	9,060	3,408	48.5%	9.5%	10.5%	86 d
Legal	8,593	2,790	37.6%	7.1%	13.2%	56 d
DevOps	8,421	3,661	42.5%	10.3%	12.2%	69 d
Hospitality	7,501	1,071	45.5%	13.2%	19.1%	70 d
Data Science	6,506	2,767	43.3%	11.2%	13.6%	71 d
Leadership	5,530	2,861	33.9%	5.3%	7.4%	56 d
Analytics	4,914	2,291	30%	4.8%	9.1%	47 d
Hardware	4,886	1,178	44.1%	7.9%	9.4%	76 d
Security	4,787	2,111	34.1%	6.4%	8.3%	55 d
Design	4,663	2,608	35.6%	8.4%	8.8%	56 d
Enterprise Apps	4,285	1,422	45.1%	13.7%	21.3%	75 d
Support	3,205	1,928	30.6%	6.9%	8.7%	48 d
QA	2,904	1,412	38.6%	9.7%	12.1%	60 d
Communications	2,589	1,369	29.7%	6.9%	5.6%	43 d
Frontend	1,880	1,094	53%	18.2%	21%	98 d
Biotech	1,825	621	26.4%	5.5%	4.6%	46 d
Aerospace	1,377	275	41.1%	9%	7.6%	70 d
Networking	1,163	608	40%	9.4%	15.5%	67 d
Robotics	1,105	385	50.4%	8.1%	11%	92 d

By country

Country	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
United States	204,032	13,890	39.8%	11.6%	13.3%	63 d
Germany	27,706	4,047	56.7%	24.4%	21.5%	117 d
United Kingdom	20,031	3,039	32.3%	9.8%	8.5%	49 d
Canada	12,374	1,858	36%	8.8%	10.3%	55 d
India	11,238	1,369	38%	7.4%	8.4%	65 d
Netherlands	9,426	1,301	49.1%	15.1%	15.8%	88 d
Poland	5,482	683	40.3%	5.3%	11%	67 d
France	5,116	783	43.1%	13.9%	13.8%	64 d
Greece	4,902	359	41.7%	13.5%	20.8%	57 d
Singapore	4,474	660	43%	13%	15.4%	69 d
Australia	4,338	836	29.3%	7.6%	7.4%	47 d
Philippines	3,927	495	39.2%	10.5%	17.3%	55 d
Spain	3,507	730	40.3%	9.2%	8.4%	61 d
Brazil	3,316	552	30.8%	6.7%	8.1%	47 d
Mexico	2,788	564	37%	11.9%	13.6%	56 d
Japan	2,257	456	50.9%	12.7%	14.1%	92 d
Ireland	1,975	353	36.4%	6.5%	13.1%	54 d
United Arab Emirates	1,917	384	40.7%	9.1%	16.6%	61 d
Belgium	1,888	413	48.4%	18.3%	16%	84 d
Portugal	1,765	306	42.5%	19.3%	19.2%	63 d

By employer size

Employer size	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
Size not known	99,009	10,453	39.5%	11.5%	14.1%	61 d
1-10 employees	4,691	684	51.7%	15.4%	7.8%	98 d
11-50 employees	15,879	3,209	44.1%	16%	12.2%	74 d
51-200 employees	62,719	7,182	39%	10.1%	12.3%	62 d
201-500 employees	46,572	2,832	35.7%	8.3%	11.9%	56 d
501-1000 employees	37,976	1,026	36.4%	8.3%	10.2%	60 d
1001-5000 employees	95,714	1,078	40.9%	10.9%	13.1%	65 d
5000+ employees	45,025	370	54.1%	27.5%	22.5%	111 d

By employer type

Employer type	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
Direct employer	382,062	26,504	40.5%	12.1%	13.2%	64 d
Staffing agency	25,523	330	47.4%	18.1%	22.1%	79 d

By seniority

Seniority	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
Level not stated	154,671	18,386	45.7%	16.6%	18.1%	75 d
Intern	12,557	4,130	37.5%	15.4%	14.4%	56 d
Junior	53,028	10,584	42.4%	18.8%	17.9%	65 d
Mid-level	35,755	9,360	38.2%	8.1%	11.6%	61 d
Senior	86,167	14,262	37.2%	7.2%	8.7%	61 d
Staff / principal	16,728	4,564	40.1%	6.8%	8.3%	69 d
Lead	28,603	7,936	36.1%	7.2%	8.6%	58 d
Head / director	20,076	7,024	30.9%	4.8%	6.3%	53 d

By work mode

Work mode	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
On-site	267,944	20,417	43.6%	14.2%	15.9%	70 d
Remote	72,043	9,937	36.5%	9.6%	11.2%	56 d
Hybrid	67,598	8,280	35.4%	8.5%	8.1%	56 d

By pay in the advert

Pay in the advert	Postings	Employers	Up over 90 days	Over a year	Ghost signals	Median age
No salary stated	263,765	22,237	42.5%	13.7%	14.8%	68 d
Salary stated	143,820	12,858	38.1%	10.2%	11.8%	61 d

What is measured

Population. Every live posting Alion reads from an employer's own applicant tracking system - 1,872,845 postings from 82,214 employers in 235 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: 407,585 postings). Across all platforms the figures are a floor: 22.1% of postings older than 90 days and 7.1% 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.
Month on month. Each month Alion reads more employers' boards, so two editions' headline figures also differ by who is in them. The comparison above uses only the employers with live postings at both measurements (17,537), and rebuilds both moments the same way from Alion's journal of when each posting went up and came down. The rebuilt September 2026 figure is checked against the published one: 294,431 postings and 39.5% over 90 days, against 294,796 and 39.9% published (the rebuild cannot apply the 48-hour re-check filter). Ghost signals are not compared: they are recomputed every night and their past values are not kept.
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, October 2026. https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-10 (CC BY 4.0)

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

To embed the headline chart:

<a href="https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-10"><img src="https://alion.io/images/data/alion-ghost-jobs-index-2026-10-headline.png" alt="Alion Ghost Jobs Index, October 2026" width="1200" height="675"></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://alion.io/data/ghost-jobs/2026-10">Alion Ghost Jobs Index</a>, October 2026</p>

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