--- title: "What percentage of jobs are ghost jobs?" description: "**Canonical URL:** https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-percentage-of-jobs-are-ghost-jobs" canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-percentage-of-jobs-are-ghost-jobs last_updated: 2026-09-10 --- # What percentage of jobs are ghost jobs? > There is no single agreed percentage, because every estimate depends on how a ghost job is defined. Surveys that ask employers about intent produce one figure, and audits that measure listings produce another. JobsPipe scores every posting it collects on observable signs, and on that measure most postings look live while a minority carry warning signs. **Canonical URL:** https://jobspipe.dev/answers/what-percentage-of-jobs-are-ghost-jobs **Topic:** Ghost jobs (https://jobspipe.dev/ghost-jobs) The definition problem is real. A posting can be open, public and honest yet still never lead to a hire this month: an evergreen requisition for nurses or drivers, a role kept up after the hire, a listing renewed to refresh the applicant pool. Ask whether the employer intends to hire and you get one answer. Ask whether the listing behaves like a live vacancy and you get a different one. Any headline percentage you read is a product of which question was asked, which boards were sampled and what counted as stale. JobsPipe takes the measurable route. Every posting on the ten collected boards is sighted on a schedule and scored 0-100 on signs that can be observed: how long it has been sighted, whether it vanished and came back, whether the poster runs a very large number of open roles at once, whether the posted date sits far behind the first sighting, whether it ever closes, and whether the description is too thin to describe one hire. A missing salary also counts, though on its own it keeps a posting in the lowest band. The chart below shows how scored active postings split across the bands in the latest scoring run. Most sit in the lowest band, a smaller group carries one warning sign, and only a thin slice carries several. The spread by board is wider than the overall split: boards fed straight from an applicant tracking system read as clean, while enterprise systems that re-list rolling requisitions read as stale. To exclude flagged postings from a query, pass max_ghost_score to the jobs search endpoint together with status set to active. ## Related questions ### How many ghost jobs are there? Nobody can count them directly, because intent to hire is not visible on a listing. What can be counted is the share of postings that show stale behavior. On the boards JobsPipe collects, that share is a minority overall and varies widely by board, from a small slice on employer job boards to a majority on some enterprise applicant tracking systems. ### How many jobs are ghost jobs? Fewer than the headlines suggest if you measure listings rather than survey employers. Most scored postings on the ten collected boards sit in the lowest band, meaning no warning sign beyond a possibly missing salary. Postings that carry several signs at once are rare. The band chart on this page shows the split. ### Why do estimates of ghost jobs differ so much? Because they measure different things. Employer surveys record admitted intent, applicant surveys record frustration, and listing audits record behavior such as age and reposting. Each also samples different boards, and boards differ sharply: a board fed by an applicant tracking system closes postings quickly, while a board with rolling requisitions keeps them public for months. ### Which boards carry the most ghost-like postings? In the JobsPipe data, the enterprise applicant tracking systems such as Workday and SmartRecruiters and the Y Combinator listings carry the highest shares of postings with a warning sign, mostly because roles are re-listed and stay open a long time. Employer boards on Workable, Paylocity, Indeed and Ashby read as the cleanest. ## More answers - [Why are there so many ghost jobs?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/why-are-there-so-many-ghost-jobs) - [Why are ghost jobs legal?](https://jobspipe.dev/answers/why-are-ghost-jobs-legal) Data behind these answers is published as shares only; every figure can be reproduced against the JobsPipe API (https://jobspipe.dev/jobs-api). --- AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, no-key sandbox (POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search), MCP server, pricing. Free key: https://jobspipe.dev/signup