Ghost jobs
Why does a posting stay up for months?
What can keep a posting up for a long time, what the data shows about it, and what it cannot show.
9 October 2026Data: as of today5 min read
55%
of live postings are older than 45 days: 836 out of 1,529.
In this article:What the numbers showPossible reasonsReposting
What the numbers show
Not every posting that stays up for a long time is bad news. The question is how large the share of old postings is, and where they pile up.
- 353
- Under 14 days
- 340
- 15–45 days
- 716
- 46–90 days
- 114
- 91–180 days
- 6
- Over 180 days
The difference is large by source too. The highest share is among wherewework postings: 94% are older than 45 days. That does not mean the site is at fault, only that postings stay up longer there, or are cleaned out less often.
Top 5Sources with the biggest ghost share
what percent of postings are older than 45 days
- 1wherewework94%252 / 269 postings
- 2AI-scraped71%330 / 464 postings
- 3profession-intern44%114 / 261 postings
- 4talent39%55 / 140 postings
- 5nofluffjobs24%8 / 33 postings
Why can a posting stay up?
The numbers cannot tell us this. These are the reasons that often come up in recruiting, and any of them can be behind the postings here.
- Nobody closed it
- The position was filled and the posting simply stayed. This is the simplest explanation, and many places have no automatic expiry either.
- They hire all the time
- Customer support, warehouses and sales always have turnover. Such employers often keep a single posting up as long as they can, or post it again and again.
- They collect CVs
- Sometimes the goal is not one specific hire but a pool of candidates to draw on later.
- A candidate is already picked
- The position may go to an internal or known candidate, yet the posting is put up anyway because of rules or habit.
- The plan changed
- The budget froze or the project fell through, and nobody took the posting down.
A telling sign: reposting
When the same employer posts the same job title several times, it often points to continuous hiring. The most copies are kept up by Innoview: “Java Developer”, as 3 separate postings.
Top 5The same posting, several copies
separate postings
- 1Innoview3דJava Developer”
- 2Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Hungary2דCloud DevOps”
- 3Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions Hungary2דDevOps Engineer”
- 4TransPerfect2דQA Automation Engineer”
- 5TSMG2דQuality control specialist for AI/ ML with Hungarian language”
How we counted
- Only postings that are still active on the original site count. The senior level is left out.
- LinkedIn is left out because it has no “still active” state, only a time window.
- Only sources with at least 30 live postings are listed, so that a handful of postings cannot skew the share.
- The list of reasons is general recruiting experience, not a measurement. The numbers show how many postings are old, not why.