Ghost jobs: how common they are, why companies post them, and how to check one.
Every posting JobsPipe collects is sighted on a schedule and scored for the signs of a job nobody is filling. This page publishes the shares by board, explains where ghost jobs come from, and lets you check any posting from LinkedIn, Indeed or the major applicant tracking systems.
What is a ghost job?
A ghost job is a job posting that stays public without a live intent to hire against it right now. It is not the same as a fake job: the company is usually real and the role usually existed. What is missing is the decision to fill it this month. Because intent cannot be observed, JobsPipe tests four things that can: how long the posting has been sighted, whether it disappeared and came back, whether it ever closes, and whether it was written for a specific hire at all.
- Age. A posting first sighted more than 45 days ago is flagged as long open; the age share below uses the 30-day mark because that is the listing expiry on the largest boards.
- Reposts. A posting that was seen at least three times with a gap of ten days or more between sightings was taken down and put back.
- No close. Employers who never close a requisition leave it collecting resumes long after the hire.
- Thin description. Under 400 characters usually means a template, not a hire.
The score adds a fifth signal, no stated salary (66.9% of scored postings), and a sixth, whether the poster runs 500 or more open roles at once, because both correlate with evergreen listings. A missing salary alone keeps a posting in the lowest band.
Why do companies post ghost jobs?
Mostly by accident of process rather than by design. The evergreen requisition is the largest source: a hospital always hires nurses, a logistics firm always hires drivers, an enterprise always hires account executives, so the posting never comes down. The second is the unclosed requisition: the hire was made, the applicant tracking system was never updated, and the job board keeps syncing it. The third is the deliberate repost, where a recruiter refreshes a stale role to reach the top of the board again. The fourth is agency and aggregator listings that mirror a client role after the client filled it.
The reasons attached to the score make that visible. Across all ten boards, the shares below are of scored active postings; a posting can carry more than one reason.
- No salary stated66.9%
- Posted by a mass poster (500+ open roles)19.2%
- Reposted (seen again after a gap of 10+ days)7.3%
- Posted date far behind first sighting5.8%
- Open for 45 days or more1.4%
- Thin description (under 400 characters)1.3%
A pattern worth knowing: the boards with the highest reposted shares are the enterprise systems. Companies that run Workday or SmartRecruiters re-list rolling requisitions as a matter of routine, so a high score there says more about how the talent team works than about whether the role is real. Read the full breakdown of why ghost jobs exist.
How common are ghost jobs?
On the ten boards JobsPipe collects, 17.8% of scored active postings carry at least one warning sign and 1.3% carry several. The rest look live. The spread by board is the real story: employer boards fed straight from an applicant tracking system read as clean, and enterprise systems with rolling requisitions read as stale.
- SmartRecruiters96.7%
- Workday94.1%
- Y Combinator82.5%
- Lever43.9%
- Greenhouse36.8%
- LinkedIn21.2%
- Ashby15.1%
- Indeed11.7%
- Workable6.4%
- Paylocity2.4%
| Board | Score 25+ | Score 50+ | Reposted | Older than 30 days | No salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SmartRecruiters | 96.7% | 40.0% | 52.6% | 71.1% | 94.7% |
| Workday | 94.1% | 39.9% | 47.1% | 58.9% | 80.3% |
| Y Combinator | 82.5% | 73.1% | 63.6% | 70.7% | 17.8% |
| Lever | 43.9% | 0.5% | 2.4% | 4.4% | 90.0% |
| Greenhouse | 36.8% | <0.5% | 2.3% | 8.5% | 55.1% |
| 21.2% | 0.6% | 9.9% | 31.1% | 76.9% | |
| Ashby | 15.1% | 2.8% | 11.0% | 19.1% | 60.8% |
| Indeed | 11.7% | <0.5% | 4.8% | 25.1% | 58.5% |
| Workable | 6.4% | <0.5% | 6.1% | 42.7% | 82.3% |
| Paylocity | 2.4% | 0.0% | 2.2% | 44.6% | 89.7% |
Are ghost jobs illegal?
Posting a job that is not actively being filled is not illegal in most places today. Advertising and consumer-protection law already reaches plainly deceptive postings, and several US states debated transparency rules for job advertisements during 2026, including proposals to require a posting date and a close date. None of that turns an evergreen requisition into a violation. What a transparency rule would change is the evidence: a public first-seen and last-seen date makes the difference between a stale listing and a live one visible to applicants, which is what the data on this page already does for the boards JobsPipe collects. The legal explainer goes through the debate without taking a side.
How to spot a ghost job
- Check the first-seen date, not the posted date. Boards reset the posted date on every repost; a crawl log does not.
- Look for a gap. A role that vanished and came back is being refreshed, not filled.
- Count the open roles at the company. Mass posters with hundreds of live listings run evergreen reqs by design.
- Read the description length. A template under 400 characters was not written for one hire.
- Check whether it closes. Postings that close within weeks are the ones that get filled; on ATS-fed boards the median posting is gone in about two weeks.
All five checks are one lookup below, and developers get the same signals as fields on every record. The checklist post walks through each one with examples.
Is this job still open?
Paste a posting URL. JobsPipe answers from its own index: when it first saw the posting, when it last saw it live, whether it has closed and why, and the ghost score with the signals behind it.
Works with LinkedIn, Indeed, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, SmartRecruiters and Workday URLs. Reads the JobsPipe index, never the board.
Filter ghost jobs out of your feed
Every record from the jobs search endpoint carries ghost_score, discovered_at, last_seen_at, status and closed_at. To keep only postings with no warning signs that were posted in the last two weeks:
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"],
"posted_at_max_age_days": 14,
"max_ghost_score": 24,
"status": "active",
"limit": 25
}'Raise max_ghost_score to 49 to allow postings whose only flag is a missing salary. Set status to closed to study what closed and when. Details in the Jobs API overview.
Try it on live postings, 1,000 jobs a month free.
Get a free API keyFAQ
What is a ghost job?
A ghost job is a job posting that stays public without a live intent to hire against it right now. It may be an evergreen requisition, a listing an employer forgot to close, a reposted role collecting resumes, or an agency ad. The measurable signs are age, reposting, a missing close, and a thin description.
How common are ghost jobs?
Most postings do not read as ghost jobs. On the ten boards JobsPipe collects, roughly four in five scored postings sit in the lowest score band. The share that carries one or more warning signs varies widely by board, from a few percent on employer job boards like Workable to more than half on enterprise systems like Workday and SmartRecruiters, where rolling requisitions dominate.
Why do companies post ghost jobs?
Rarely to deceive. The common causes are evergreen requisitions for roles a company always hires, postings left open after the hire, roles reposted to refresh the applicant pool, agency and mass-poster listings, and internal reqs that were never closed in the applicant tracking system.
Are ghost jobs illegal?
Posting a job that is not actively being filled is not illegal in most places today. Several US states have debated transparency rules for job advertisements in 2026, and existing advertising and consumer-protection law already covers plainly deceptive postings. Whether a specific posting crosses that line depends on facts a public listing does not show.
How do I check whether a job is still open?
Paste the posting URL into the checker on this page. JobsPipe returns the date it first saw the posting, the date it last saw it live, whether it has closed, and the ghost score with the reasons behind it. The same fields come back from the API on every record.
Can I filter ghost jobs out of an API feed?
Yes. The jobs search endpoint accepts max_ghost_score, so a request with max_ghost_score set to 24 and status set to active returns only postings with no warning signs. Combine it with posted_at_max_age_days to drop old listings entirely.