DeUnemployment  ·  Data library

Ghost jobs: how long postings really stay listed

We do not guess whether a posting is a ghost job. We measure its listing age, and we cross the source's publish date with the date our own crawler last saw it in that source.

Key figures

Measure
Listed more than 30 / 60 / 90 days46.3 / 34.6 / 29.7%listing age, not a liveness check
Median listing age26 days
90-day-old postings still re-crawled50.79%our pub×seen signal
Dead links (probed one by one)0.55%of 23,080 probed

Frequently asked

What is a ghost job?

A posting that stays listed long after the role is filled or closed. We measure listing age and link liveness rather than guess.

How do you know a posting is old but still active?

We cross the source's publish date with the date our crawler last re-saw the posting in that source — a signal only a persistent crawl produces.

How many listing links are actually dead?

0.55% of the 23,080 employer URLs we probed one by one.

Sources & citation. Measured across 6,564,432 job postings (no sampling) and 23,080 probed links. License CC BY 4.0. Data: JSON · CSV · data health · methodology.
Cite as: DeUnemployment, “Ghost jobs and listing age — measured, 2026-09-14”, https://deunemployment.com/data/ghost-jobs (2026-09-14).

More data

“Still listed” is a listing-age measure from the source publish date, not a verification that a role is open; link liveness is measured separately. Figures are regenerated monthly. Generated 2026-09-14.