--- title: "Is the job market bad right now? What live job postings can and cannot tell you" description: "[NewSearch millions of jobs from your AI agent with MCP→](/blog/jobspipe-mcp-server)" canonical: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/is-the-job-market-bad-right-now last_updated: 2026-09-10 --- [NewSearch millions of jobs from your AI agent with MCP→](/blog/jobspipe-mcp-server) [All posts](/blog) ![](/listly/card-field.png) GuideRight Guide·Sep 9, 2026·8 min read # Is the job market bad right now? What live job postings can and cannot tell you An honest cross-section from live postings: how concentrated openings are, how fast postings close by board, how many state a salary, and the share of established employers opening their first role in a function this month. Also what postings data cannot say, including whether the market is better or worse than last year, and how to pull the cut for your own occupation and country. ![Dvir Atias](/authors/dvir-atias.jpg) Dvir Atias Founder, JobsPipe If you are asking this because your applications are going nowhere, the short version is at the top and it is honest: the answer depends on your function and your city more than on the calendar, and the loudest sources have the least data. The rest of this post shows what live job postings can say about the market this month, what they cannot say, and how to get the cut that applies to you. ## Is the job market bad right now? For some functions and cities, yes; for others, no, and no single number settles it. The official answer comes from unemployment and openings statistics. Live postings add a different view: how concentrated openings are, how fast they close, and how many state pay. Those shares are below, and they describe this month, not a trend. One thing this post will not do is tell you the market is better or worse than last year. The corpus behind these numbers holds about three months of depth and its board mix shifts week to week, so a year-over-year comparison from it would be fiction. The [Labour Market Pulse](/pulse) archives a snapshot every month; once the archive is deep enough, that is where the comparison will live. ## What the postings say this month 77.7% Postings at employers with 10+ openings share of active postings 13.4% Employers with 10+ openings share of companies with an active posting 41.5% Employers with a single opening share of companies with an active posting 54.4% Closed within 30 days postings closed in the last 60 days, all boards The first two numbers are the same fact from both ends: 77.7% of open postings sit at the 13.4% of employers hiring ten or more roles at once. That concentration is why the market can feel closed and open at the same time. If you are applying to single-opening employers, which are 41.5% of all employers with a posting, you are competing for a small share of the openings. How fast postings close is the second cut. The median days live and the share closed within 30 days differ by board, and the first thing they reflect is how a closure is detected, not who posts there. | Board | Median days live | 75th percentile | Closed within 30 days | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Lever | 8 d | 10 d | 93.0% | | Paylocity | 13 d | 14 d | 96.5% | | Ashby | 14 d | 33 d | 69.6% | | Greenhouse | 14 d | 36 d | 68.1% | | Indeed | 30 d | 35 d | 51.8% | | LinkedIn | 30 d | 36 d | 51.5% | | Y Combinator | 33 d | 47 d | 43.4% | Read the median with the detection mechanism in mind. On Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Y Combinator and Paylocity, JobsPipe checks each posting continuously and records the removal when the employer takes it down, so the median there reflects fill or withdrawal. On LinkedIn and Indeed a closure is detected when the listing reaches its 30-day expiry, so the median there sits at the expiry and measures the board’s listing rule rather than the employer’s decision. Compare boards within a group, not across the two. The third cut is pay transparency. A posting that states a salary is one you can evaluate before applying, and the share that do varies by board more than by anything else. - Y Combinator67.7% - Ashby56.1% - Greenhouse46.8% - Indeed36.8% - Workday23.3% - Lever22.7% - LinkedIn22.1% - Workable19.6% - Paylocity10.7% - SmartRecruiters5.3% Share of active postings stating a salary or salary range, by board. How this was measured Measured from postings on the ten collected boards, dated by their first sighting in the JobsPipe crawl log: postings closed in the last 60 days for days live; survival cohorts (first sighted 14 and 30 days ago) are published only for boards whose removals are detected continuously from the board feed (Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Y Combinator, Paylocity); LinkedIn and Indeed closures cluster at the 30-day listing expiry. Generated 2026-09-09. Shares only: JobsPipe publishes percentages, not counts. Employer concentration is computed by grouping active postings by company domain. Days live are measured from the first sighting in the JobsPipe crawl log to the check that marked the posting closed; that check runs continuously on Greenhouse, Ashby, Lever, Y Combinator and Paylocity and at listing expiry on LinkedIn and Indeed. Salary shares count postings with a parsed minimum or maximum. All cross-sectional. ``` curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"status":"active","min_salary_usd":1,"posted_at_max_age_days":30,"limit":50}' ``` ## Why does the job market feel so bad? Because the parts of it a job seeker touches are the parts that have degraded: postings that stay up for months without a hire, descriptions too thin to judge, and no salary. None of those is the same as fewer jobs, and each one is measurable. - **Long-open postings.** Every posting JobsPipe returns carries a `ghost_score` and a `discovered_at` date. Filter with `max_ghost_score` and you stop applying to requisitions that have been open since spring. - **Concentration.** When most openings belong to a small set of employers, the average applicant sees the same few companies everywhere and concludes nobody else is hiring. The single-opening employers are there; they are just quiet. - **Thin and repeated postings.** Aggregators republish the same requisition under several titles and locations, so the feed looks bigger than the market and every application feels like one of hundreds. - **No pay stated.** On most boards the majority of postings state no salary, so applicants spend interviews discovering a number the employer already knew. ## When will the job market get better? Postings cannot forecast. What they can show is the leading edge: the share of established employers that opened their first posting in a function this month. A company that has not posted an engineering role in months and does so now is a hiring decision made after the budget meeting, and that share is the closest thing in this data to a turn. - First engineering posting10.6% - First sales posting10.3% - First marketing posting6.6% Share of established employers (first posting in the corpus older than 30 days) whose first posting in the function appeared in the last 30 days. Watch those shares month to month on the Pulse, next to the official openings series, and you will see a turn before the headlines do. What you should not do is read this month’s value alone as good or bad: it has no baseline yet. ## What this data cannot tell you - **Year-over-year change.** The corpus is about three months deep and its crawl mix changes. No trend claims are made here, and none should be inferred. - **Hires.** A closed posting is a removed advertisement, not a hire. `closed_reason` says how it left the board. - **Applications.** Nothing here measures competition per role. The `applicant_count` field is populated only where a board publishes it. - **The whole market.** Ten boards are collected. Employers on other ATS platforms, in staffing-only channels, or hiring by referral are invisible here. - **Survey measures.** Unemployment, participation and quits come from household and establishment surveys, covered in the [labour market data sources guide](/blog/labor-market-data-sources). Postings complement them; they do not replace them. ## How to get the cut that applies to you The market you are in is one occupation in one country, and that slice is one query. This pulls active software developer postings in the United States posted in the last 30 days with a stated salary and a low ghost score: ``` curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "occupation_code_or": ["2512"], "job_country_code_or": ["US"], "status": "active", "posted_at_max_age_days": 30, "min_salary_usd": 1, "max_ghost_score": 25, "limit": 50 }' ``` Swap the occupation code for yours from the [ISCO-08 list](/blog/isco-08), add `job_location_or` for a city, and page with `cursor`. The monthly aggregates, with a CSV, are on the [Pulse](/pulse); the wider set of cuts is under [labour market insights](/labour-market). Query the postings behind these numbers - 1,000 jobs a month free. ![](/listly/shape-heart.png) FAQs ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Is the job market bad right now? For some functions and cities yes, for others no, and no single number settles it. Official unemployment and openings statistics answer the macro question. Live postings add a cross-section: how concentrated openings are across employers, how fast postings close on each board (read with the detection mechanism in mind, since LinkedIn and Indeed closures are detected at the 30-day listing expiry while ATS feeds are checked continuously), how many state a salary, and the share of established employers opening a first role in a function this month. The post publishes those shares for the current month only. ### Is the job market worse than last year? JobsPipe cannot answer that yet and the post says so. The postings corpus holds about three months of depth and its board mix shifts week to week, so a year-over-year comparison from it would not be defensible. The Labour Market Pulse archives a snapshot every month; once the archive is deep enough, that is where the comparison will be published. ### Why does the job market feel so bad? Because the parts a job seeker touches have degraded even where the number of jobs has not: postings that stay up for months without a hire, thin descriptions, republished duplicates and no stated salary. Openings are also concentrated at a small share of employers hiring ten or more roles, so the same few companies appear everywhere. Each of those is measurable, and the JobsPipe API exposes ghost\_score, discovered\_at and salary fields to filter them out. ### When will the job market get better? Postings cannot forecast. The closest leading signal in the data is the share of established employers whose first posting in a function appeared in the last 30 days, because a company reopening engineering or sales hiring after months of silence is a budget decision. The post publishes that share for the current month; watched monthly on the Pulse next to the official openings series, it shows a turn before headlines do. ### What can job postings data not tell you about the job market? Year-over-year change, because the corpus is about three months deep. Hires, because a closed posting is a removed advertisement. Applications per role, except where a board publishes an applicant count. The whole market, because ten boards are collected and employers on other platforms or hiring by referral are invisible. Survey measures such as unemployment and quits come from official statistics, which postings complement rather than replace. ### How do I get job market data for my own occupation and city? One query to POST /v1/jobs/search: set occupation\_code\_or to your ISCO-08 code, job\_country\_code\_or to your country, optionally job\_location\_or for a city, posted\_at\_max\_age\_days for recency, min\_salary\_usd to keep only postings that state pay, and max\_ghost\_score to drop long-open requisitions. Page with cursor. The monthly aggregates and a CSV are free on the JobsPipe Labour Market Pulse. [ ← Previous In-demand skills in 2026: what live job postings ask for, by function ](/blog/in-demand-skills)[ Next → Is web scraping legal? Public data, terms of service, hiQ v. LinkedIn, and the job-data answer ](/blog/is-web-scraping-legal) --- Canonical URL: https://jobspipe.dev/blog/is-the-job-market-bad-right-now Title: Is the job market bad right now? What live job postings can and cannot tell you Description: An honest cross-section from live postings: how concentrated openings are, how fast postings close by board, how many state a salary, and the share of established employers opening their first role in a function this month. Also what postings data cannot say, including whether the market is better or worse than last year, and how to pull the cut for your own occupation and country. --- 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