--- title: "Ghost Job Index October 2026: ghost job statistics by board" description: "The Ghost Job Index measures signals, not intent: how long a posting has been visible, whether it vanished and reappeared, and how those stack." canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/ghost-job-index date_published: 2026-10-11 date_modified: 2026-10-11 author: Dvir Atias --- # Ghost Job Index, October 2026: how many job postings are ghosts, by board, company size and country The Ghost Job Index measures signals, not intent: how long a posting has been visible, whether it vanished and reappeared, and how those stack. In the October 2026 edition, 9.5% of active postings had been up 45 days or more and 6.8% were both that old and reposted. The share varies far more by board and company size than by country. A monthly measure of ghost-like job postings from the live JobsPipe index. 9.5% of active postings have been visible for 45 days or more, 6.8% are that old and have also disappeared and come back, and on company career sites the largest employers carry 3.8x the share of long-open postings that the smallest do. 9.5% of active job postings in the JobsPipe index have been publicly visible for 45 days or more, and 6.8%, about 1 in 15, are both that old and have disappeared from their board and come back at least once. Those two numbers are the core of the Ghost Job Index for October 2026. They are signals, not verdicts: a long-open posting can be a hard role to fill, and a reposted one can be a genuine refresh. What the index shows is where those signals pile up, and the pattern is strong. The share of ghost-like postings depends far more on the board and the size of the employer than on the country. On company career sites, postings at employers with 10,000 or more staff are 3.8x as likely to be 45+ days old as postings at companies with fewer than 50 people. SmartRecruiters carries the highest share of long-open postings of any board we collect. 9.5% Open 45+ days share of scored active postings 1.5% Open 90+ days log starts 2026-07-23 6.8% Old and reposted 1 in 15 3.5% Ghost score 50+ two or more strong signals ## What the index counts Every active posting that has been seen at least twice, or has been visible for 14 days or more, gets a ghost score from 0 to 100 that is rebuilt each time the posting is sighted again. The index reports the underlying signals rather than the score alone, because each one can be checked against the posting history: - **Open 45+ days**: first sighted 45 or more days ago and still live. This is a lower bound, because the sighting log only starts on 2026-07-23; a posting that was already old then counts from that date. - **Reposted**: seen three or more times with a gap of ten days or more between two sightings. On boards we sample rather than sweep in full, part of a gap can be ours, so read reposting on LinkedIn and Indeed as an upper bound. - **Ghost score 50+**: two or more strong signals stacked, for example 45+ days open and reposted, or open and posted by an employer with 500 or more live openings. The background on what a ghost job is, and how to tell one from a slow hire, is in [What are ghost jobs?](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/what-are-ghost-jobs). ## Ghost jobs by job board Boards behave very differently because they handle old postings differently. Aggregators such as Indeed and LinkedIn expire listings on a timer, so a posting cannot sit there forever. Company career sites run on applicant tracking systems that keep a requisition live until someone closes it, which is where evergreen and forgotten postings accumulate. The career-site boards in this table are Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, SmartRecruiters, Teamtailor, Recruitee, Personio. | Board | Open 45+ days | Open 45+ days and reposted | Ghost score 50+ | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | SmartRecruiters | 61.6% | 49.7% | 53.7% | | Y Combinator | 49.6% | 41.4% | 41.3% | | Workday | 41.7% | 15.9% | 33.7% | | Workable | 26.7% | 24.7% | 17.2% | | Greenhouse | 19.0% | 7.0% | 11.8% | | Ashby | 10.3% | 4.6% | 4.6% | | Indeed | 9.7% | 8.3% | 2.5% | | LinkedIn | 9.3% | 5.5% | 3.7% | | Breezy HR | 7.8% | 4.8% | 3.8% | | Lever | 6.5% | 3.4% | 5.2% | | Recruitee | 5.7% | 3.3% | 0.7% | | Pinpoint | 4.7% | 4.6% | 0.8% | | Arbeitnow | 4.7% | 4.2% | <0.5% | | Teamtailor | 4.2% | 4.1% | 4.5% | | Personio | 2.5% | 1.2% | <0.5% | | Himalayas | 1.7% | 1.6% | <0.5% | | Bayt | 1.2% | 1.1% | 0.9% | | CV-Library | 0.9% | 0.8% | <0.5% | | Rise | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.9% | | JobTech (Sweden) | <0.5% | <0.5% | <0.5% | | Resume-Library | <0.5% | <0.5% | <0.5% | | EURES | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.0% | | All boards | 9.5% | 6.8% | 3.5% | The top of the table, SmartRecruiters, Y Combinator, Workday, is made of boards with no expiry timer, where a posting stays live until someone closes it. The per-board explanation, with the posting habits behind each row, is in [ghost jobs by job board](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/ghost-jobs-by-job-board). ## The big-company effect On company career sites, where reposting is measured on a full sweep rather than a sample, the share of long-open postings rises steadily with employer size. 8.7% of career-site postings at companies with fewer than 50 employees have been up 45 days or more. At employers with 10,000 or more staff the share is 32.9%. - Under 50 employees8.7% - 50 to 24910.4% - 250 to 99911.7% - 1,000 to 9,99918.8% - 10,000 or more32.9% Career-site postings open 45 days or more, by employer headcount, October 2026. Postings at employers with unknown headcount are excluded. Large employers run evergreen requisitions for roles they hire continuously, such as nurses, store staff and software engineers, and many of their postings are real pipelines rather than single seats. That is a different thing from a fake job, but for a job seeker or a hiring-signal model the effect is the same: the posting does not mean a new opening this week. ## Ghost jobs by country The country table only includes markets where our collection has run long enough for the 45-day signal to mean something. Markets we started collecting recently would look artificially clean. | Country | Open 45+ days | Open 45+ days and reposted | Ghost score 50+ | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | United States | 14.0% | 10.1% | 4.9% | | Netherlands | 13.3% | 8.9% | 5.6% | | Singapore | 12.3% | 9.1% | 4.9% | | Germany | 11.3% | 7.1% | 4.1% | | Canada | 10.7% | 7.9% | 3.3% | | Australia | 10.4% | 7.8% | 3.4% | | India | 8.8% | 6.2% | 3.8% | | France | 8.5% | 5.8% | 3.1% | | United Kingdom | 8.2% | 6.3% | 2.1% | ## By occupation and seniority - Craft and Related Trades Workers12.4% - Professionals11.4% - Managers11.3% - Elementary Occupations11.3% - Plant and Machine Operators and Assemblers11.2% - Technicians and Associate Professionals11.0% - Services And Sales Workers10.1% - Clerical Support Workers8.2% Postings open 45 days or more by ISCO-08 major group, October 2026. Seniority moves the numbers less than board or employer size. Entry-level postings are the least likely to be long open (6.8%), lead roles the most (11.6%), which fits the slower search for senior hires. | Seniority | Open 45+ days | Open 45+ days and reposted | Ghost score 50+ | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mid level | 8.2% | 5.7% | 3.2% | | Entry level | 6.8% | 4.4% | 2.8% | | Lead | 11.6% | 8.3% | 4.5% | | Executive | 8.9% | 6.2% | 3.4% | | Senior | 8.4% | 5.8% | 3.4% | ## What the index does not say - It does not say any single posting is fake. It says how often the measurable signals appear. - It is a lower bound on age. Postings that existed before 2026-07-23 are dated from that day, so the true share of very old postings is higher than 1.5%. - It is not a trend yet. This is the first edition on a fixed method; month-on-month changes start with the next one. ## Filtering ghost-like postings out with the API The same score is a filter on the search endpoint. This returns active data engineer postings from US company career sites and drops anything scoring above 24: ``` curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "job_title_or": ["data engineer"], "job_country_code_or": ["US"], "source_or": ["greenhouse", "lever", "ashby", "workday"], "status": "active", "max_ghost_score": 24, "limit": 25 }' ``` Every record carries `ghost_score`, `discovered_at` and `last_seen_at`, so you can apply a stricter rule of your own. [How to spot ghost jobs](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/how-to-spot-ghost-jobs) covers the manual checks. How this was measured Measured from active postings across the boards JobsPipe collects that carry a ghost score, scored on 2026-10-11. Generated 2026-10-11. Shares only: JobsPipe publishes percentages, not counts. Each posting is counted once. Age and reposting come from the sighting log, which starts on 2026-07-23 for the applicant tracking system boards. The career-site cut uses Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workday, SmartRecruiters, Teamtailor, Recruitee, Personio. ``` curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"status":"active","max_ghost_score":24,"limit":25}' ``` Use this data Free to cite, chart and republish with a link back. Download the full table as [CSV](https://jobspipe.dev/data/ghost-job-index.csv). Suggested citation: JobsPipe, “Ghost Job Index, October 2026”, October 2026. https://jobspipe.dev/blog/ghost-job-index Journalists and researchers: for a cut by state, occupation or company size that is not in the tables, email [dvir@jobspipe.dev](mailto:dvir@jobspipe.dev). ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What percentage of job postings are ghost jobs? It depends on the definition. In the JobsPipe Ghost Job Index for October 2026, 9.5% of active postings had been visible for 45 days or more, 6.8% were that old and had also been reposted, and 3.5% carried two or more strong ghost signals. Those are signals of a stale or evergreen posting, not proof that a role is fake. ### Which job boards have the most ghost jobs? Company career sites run on applicant tracking systems, because they keep requisitions open until someone closes them. In October 2026, SmartRecruiters (61.6% open 45+ days), Y Combinator (49.6% open 45+ days), Workday (41.7% open 45+ days) led the index. Aggregators such as Indeed and LinkedIn expire postings on a timer, which caps how old a listing can get. ### Do big companies post more ghost jobs? On company career sites, yes: 32.9% of postings at employers with 10,000 or more staff had been up 45 days or more, against 8.7% at companies under 50 people. Much of that is evergreen hiring for roles filled continuously rather than fake listings. Related ## Keep reading - [Reference · Sep 9, 2026Ghost jobs by job board: share of ghost-like postings on LinkedIn, Indeed, Workday, Greenhouse and six more](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/ghost-jobs-by-job-board) - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026What are ghost jobs? Definition, meaning and how to tell one from a real opening](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/what-are-ghost-jobs) - [Guide · Sep 9, 2026How to spot ghost jobs: a seven-point checklist mapped to real data fields](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/how-to-spot-ghost-jobs) - [Reference · Oct 11, 2026Pay transparency by state, October 2026: how many job postings show a salary where the law requires it](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/pay-transparency-by-state) - [Guide · May 28, 2026Upwork statistics 2026: what 5,000 live job listings reveal](https://jobspipe.dev/blog/upwork-statistics-2026) --- Try it with no key: `curl -d '{"limit":3}' https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/sandbox/jobs/search`. AI agents: the full machine-readable index of this site is https://jobspipe.dev/llms.txt?src=md-twin - API quickstart, MCP server, pricing. Free key (1,000 jobs to start): https://jobspipe.dev/signup