28.3% of job postings on company career sites have been open over 90 days

Unlisted has published its Ghost Jobs Report for September 2026. By its count, 163,057 dated postings on employers' own career sites have been open more than 90 days, equal to 28.3% of all dated listings. Another 94,106 have been up more than 180 days, and the median age of an open posting is 36 days.

The report calls a posting stale when the employer's own site has shown it open more than 90 days from the date it was published. Its authors stress that they never label an individual posting a ghost job: the report publishes rates, not verdicts.

How old the open postings are

The distribution runs from 45.1% of postings under 30 days old and 17.1% in the 30 to 60 day band down to 9.5% between 60 and 90 days. The two stale bands hold the rest: 12% are 90 to 180 days old and 16.3% have been open more than 180 days.

Categories and countries

Hospitality postings sit the longest: of 23,639 open roles, 43.9% have been up more than 90 days, with a median age of 65 days. Education follows at 37.4%, then engineering at 32.3% (69,017 open postings). Healthcare turns over fastest at 19.7%, with a median of 29 days.

Among countries, Sweden has the highest share at 40.9%, followed by the Netherlands (39.2%), Spain (34.3%), France (32.6%) and Germany (31.7%). The United States, with the largest catalogue at 334,681 open postings, sits at 26.2% and states a salary in 50.7% of listings. Disclosure varies sharply: 3.9% in Germany against 42.7% in Italy.

Tracking systems and employers

How old postings get also depends on the system an employer posts through: Lever boards carry the largest stale share at 48.2%, Workday the smallest at 17.2%. Among employers, O'Reilly Auto Parts has the most open postings (14,320, 45.6% of them over 90 days), while Whataburger Restaurants shows 83.9% stale across 4,184 roles, at a median age of 239 days. The report notes that a long-open posting is not proof of anything on its own.

Closures, reposts and method

In the last 30 days, 88,895 postings were removed from employers' sites: 14.6% came down within a week and 30.8% within two weeks, with a median of 24 days from publishing to removal. The authors call these figures a lower bound, because they have been watching for just 29 days.

4.2% of closed postings came back within 30 days: in 3,915 cases the same employer republished the same role as a new posting, and a further 4,576 open postings were closed and reopened in place. Unlisted reads the public APIs of the applicant tracking systems employers post through, every few hours; nothing is scraped from job boards and nothing is estimated. Every table in the report is also published as a CSV.