28% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days
- ID
- 28130
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 24 Sep 2026, 12:35 AM
- Fetched
- 24 Sep 2026, 10:28 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://unlisted.careers/ghost-jobs/report/2026-09
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 24 Sep 2026, 10:29 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_founders
What happened
Unlisted's September 2026 Ghost Jobs Report measured 607,050 open postings across 15 applicant tracking systems by reading each employer's own careers site, and found 28.3% (163,057 postings) had been open more than 90 days, with 94,106 open over 180 days and a median open posting age of 36 days. The stale share varies sharply by category and by ATS: Hospitality is worst at 43.9%, Engineering sits at 32.3% (median 46 days), while Lever boards carry 48.2% stale postings versus 17.2% on Workday. The report also found 14.6% of closed postings came down within a week, and 4.2% were reposted as a new listing within 30 days.
Why it matters
If you are job hunting, posting age is now checkable before you spend an evening on an application: Engineering listings are 32.3% likely to be over 90 days old, and if the company posts through Lever or BambooHR (48.2% and 47.9% stale) you should verify the date on the employer's own careers site first. The flip side is the signal for anyone hiring: a role that stays open past 90 days is visible as stale, and 14.6% of closures happen within a week, so fast-closing postings are the ones worth prioritizing.
Discussion angle
Should job seekers use ATS vendor as a screening heuristic — is it fair to skip a Lever or BambooHR listing knowing roughly half are stale, or does that just filter out smaller companies that can't afford Workday?