Short answer: a job posting stays up until the employer fills or closes the role, so there is no fixed length, but most open postings have been up for weeks or months. On any given day, the typical open job posting has already been up for about two and a half months. We dated 94,895 live postings at 1,689 employers on 12 October 2026. The median posting was 72 days old, 43% had been open for more than 90 days, and 1 in 10 had been up for over a year. Only 8% were less than a week old.
45% of employers had at least one posting that had been live for over a year.
How old are the jobs you're looking at?
We took every open posting on the public job boards of 1,689 employers using Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, and measured how long ago each was first published.
| Time since first published | Share of open postings |
|---|---|
| 0–7 days | |
| 8–30 days | |
| 31–60 days | |
| 61–90 days | |
| 91–180 days | |
| 181–365 days | |
| Over 1 year |
Postings published in the last week make up just 7.9% of what is open. If you sort a board by "most recent" and stop after a week, you are looking at roughly one posting in twelve.
Why this isn't "time to hire"
A snapshot of open postings over-represents the ones that stay open. A role filled in ten days is only on the board for ten days, while a role that never fills shows up in every snapshot for a year. So "the median open posting is 72 days old" does not mean jobs take 72 days to fill. It means the listings you see when you browse today skew old. For a job seeker, that skew is what matters.
By seniority: internships turn over fastest
| Seniority | Open postings | Median age | Over 90 days | Over 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internships | 2,772 | 32 days | 15.5% | 5.7% |
| New grad and entry level | 5,447 | 65 days | 41.8% | 7.2% |
| Mid level or unspecified | 57,032 | 84 days | 47.8% | 12.9% |
| Senior, staff, lead and above | 29,644 | 60 days | 36.9% | 6.2% |
Internship postings have a median age of 32 days because internship hiring runs on a calendar: postings open for a season and close. Mid-level roles with no seniority marker in the title are the oldest group, with a median of 84 days and 12.9% open for over a year. Many of those are generic titles ("Software Engineer", "Account Executive") that companies hire for continuously.
Is an old posting a ghost job?
Not necessarily. "Ghost job" usually means a listing with no real intent to hire soon. Posting age is the clearest outside signal, but it is not proof. An old posting can be any of these:
- A role hired for continuously. Sales, support and common engineering titles are often left up and filled several times over.
- A slow search for a hard role. Specialist and senior roles can genuinely take months.
- A stalled or frozen requisition that nobody took down. This is the case job seekers worry about, and from the outside it looks the same as the first two.
- An open-ended talent pool. 12.3% of employers had at least one posting that was explicitly not a specific job, titled "General Application", "Join our Talent Community" or similar.
What the data does show is scale. 24.8% of employers had most of their open postings older than 90 days. At those companies, most of what is listed is probably not urgent, whatever the reason. The ghost-job checklist covers the other signals worth checking before you apply.
By applicant tracking system
| ATS | Employers | Open postings | Median age | Over 90 days | Over 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashby | 630 | 19,915 | 53 days | 31.0% | 3.5% |
| Greenhouse | 780 | 55,942 | 67 days | 41.7% | 8.5% |
| Lever | 281 | 19,038 | 135 days | 59.7% | 22.7% |
Employers on Ashby, which skews toward younger, fast-growing companies, have the freshest boards. Lever boards are much older, with a median of 135 days and 22.7% of postings over a year old. Part of that gap may be how each system records dates: Lever reports when a posting was created, which can be earlier than when it went live. Treat the Lever figure as an upper bound.
What to do with this
- Check the posting date before you invest real effort. A two-minute application to a 200-day-old posting is a reasonable bet. A tailored cover letter for one usually isn't.
- Prioritize the newest 8%. Fresh postings are a small slice of what is open, which makes them easy to cover thoroughly every day.
- Read "general application" for what it is. It's a way into a talent pool, not a specific open role.
- Watch for reposts. When a role is closed and reposted, it gets a new date. A "new" posting with identical wording to one you saw months ago is the same search, still unfilled.
How we measured this
On 12 October 2026 we downloaded every open posting from the public job-board APIs of Greenhouse (first_published), Lever (createdAt) and Ashby (publishedAt) for 1,691 employers taken from two public early-career US tech job lists (SimplifyJobs on GitHub). Age is the snapshot time minus that date. 33 postings with no date were excluded. Seniority comes from job-title keywords. The sample leans toward US technology employers. Large enterprises on Workday or iCIMS aren't covered because those systems publish no equivalent public API. Aggregated data: posting age by segment (CSV). Method and data for the wider study are in What Job Applications Actually Ask.
Frequently asked questions
How long do job postings stay up?
On 12 October 2026 the median open posting across 1,689 employers had been live for 72 days. 43% had been open more than 90 days and 10% more than a year.
How long is a job posting usually up?
There is no standard length. Postings stay up until the role is filled or closed. In our snapshot the median open posting had been up 72 days, internships 32 days, and mid-level roles 84 days.
How long do job postings stay up on LinkedIn?
We did not measure LinkedIn. Our data covers employers' own job boards on Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby. If the role is also on the employer's careers page, the date shown there is the better guide to how long it has really been open.
Is a job posting that's been up for months a ghost job?
Not necessarily. Old postings include continuously hired roles, slow searches for hard roles, and stalled requisitions. Age is a signal to weigh, not proof. 24.8% of employers had most of their open postings older than 90 days.
What share of job postings are new?
Only 7.9% of open postings were less than a week old, and 27.5% were less than a month old.
Do internship postings stay up as long as other jobs?
No. Internship postings had a median age of 32 days, against 84 days for mid-level roles, because internship hiring follows a seasonal calendar.
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