Ghost jobs by industry: how many job listings are stale?
About 6% of the roughly 91,000 job listings open in Applier's job catalog on 4 November 2026 were stale: still online, but first posted more than 30 days earlier. Among the 15 industries with at least 1,000 open listings, the share ran from 2.1% in advertising services to 20.2% in the Information & Communication Technology category, with Sales next at 10.9%.
What we measured
This is Applier's own snapshot of the 90,979 listings that were open in its worldwide job catalog on 4 November 2026, across the 133 industries with at least 50 open listings each. A listing counts as stale when it is still online but was first posted more than 30 days earlier.
A stale listing doesn't prove that a job is fake. It can be a hard-to-fill role that is still being actively recruited. It is a signal that the posting deserves a closer look before you put an hour into an application.
This first edition covers stale listings only. Reposts, where a listing is taken down and later put back up, will be added in a later update, once there is enough history to count them.
Stale listings by industry
The table covers every industry with at least 1,000 open listings, ordered from the highest stale share to the lowest. Some headings are a job board's own category and others are the employer's industry, so see "About the data" below before comparing rows.
| Industry | Open listings | Stale listings |
|---|---|---|
| Information & Communication Technology | 1,781 | 20.2% |
| Sales | 1,836 | 10.9% |
| Defense and Space Manufacturing | 1,047 | 8.3% |
| Business Consulting and Services | 3,471 | 7.5% |
| IT Services and IT Consulting | 10,427 | 6.8% |
| Staffing and Recruiting | 5,771 | 6.7% |
| Financial Services | 4,003 | 6.4% |
| Software Development | 9,095 | 5.8% |
| Technology, Information and Internet | 5,765 | 4.9% |
| Retail | 2,423 | 4.7% |
| Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics | 1,836 | 3.5% |
| Construction | 3,048 | 3.4% |
| Professional Services | 1,224 | 3.4% |
| Hospitals and Health Care | 5,072 | 2.8% |
| Advertising Services | 1,322 | 2.1% |
Smaller industries swing more. Across all 133, the share runs from 0% in mental health care, IT system data services, rail transportation and market research, each with fewer than 200 open listings, to 38.2% in internet news, which had 55.
What the numbers say
- Two job-board categories top the table. Information & Communication Technology and Sales are categories used by the job board SEEK. The employer-industry groups for similar work sit far lower: IT Services and IT Consulting at 6.8% and Software Development at 5.8%. Part of that gap may come from how long listings stay up on each board, not only from the industry itself.
- Most large industries sit between about 3% and 8%. Defense and space manufacturing (8.3%) and business consulting (7.5%) are at the top of that band; hospitals and health care (2.8%) and advertising services (2.1%) are the lowest of the large industries.
- These are not the same as published ghost-job rates. Greenhouse, which sees hiring activity inside its own platform, reported that 18% to 22% of the jobs posted on its platform in a given quarter were classified as ghost jobs, meaning no hiring activity followed. Its industry breakdown, as reported by Quartz, put construction highest at 38%, while construction listings are among the least likely to be stale in Applier's catalog (3.4%). That is expected: Greenhouse measures whether anyone was hired, while these figures count only how long a public listing has been online. Treat them as two lenses on the same problem, not as competing numbers.
What to do as a job seeker
- Prefer fresh postings. A listing posted in the last week or two has not had time to go stale. Sort by date and start there, especially in the industries at the top of the table.
- Check the posting date. If the date is missing or the listing says "posted 30+ days ago", treat it with suspicion. Ask whether the role would really still be open after that long.
- Look for the job on the employer's own careers page. If it appears on a job board but not on the company's site, the listing may be a leftover. The guide to Easy Apply versus the company website explains why the employer's own page is the better place to apply.
- Run a live check. Paste the link into Applier's free ghost job checker. It shows whether the posting looks live, closed, stale or reposted before you spend time applying.
- Don't stop at one application. Even a live posting can lead nowhere, so keep a steady flow of applications going. How long a job search takes has the national data on what to expect.
What reposting means for applicants
A reposted job is not automatically a ghost job. An employer may have closed the first listing after a first round of interviews led nowhere, a budget may have been released later, or the company may hire continuously for the same role. For you, the useful question is whether anyone is actually being hired.
If a role comes back more than once, apply once, tailor your resume to the ad, and don't wait on it. If you can reach the person who manages the role, a short note can tell you quickly whether the job is real. Here's how to email the hiring manager after applying.
Why ghost listings matter more when you apply in volume
Every application takes time to tailor, submit and track. Even at the overall rate of about 6%, and far more in some categories, a search that treats every posting as equal spends part of its effort on jobs that were never going to answer. Filtering for freshness is the cheapest improvement you can make. In the same Greenhouse report, three in five candidates said they suspect they have encountered a ghost job, so the worry is widespread and, as the table shows, not unfounded.
It is also a reason to be careful with tools that apply for you. Check how a tool chooses jobs, and whether it can tell a live listing from one left online. Our guide on whether auto-apply is safe covers the questions to ask.
About the data
The figures come from Applier's job catalog only, as a snapshot of the listings open on 4 November 2026, and they don't include any customer data. A listing's first-posted date is the date the listing shows, or the date Applier first saw it when it shows none. Industries with fewer than 50 open listings are left out.
Industry headings come from the employer's industry where Applier knows it, and otherwise from the job board's category for the listing. That mixes two labelling schemes: Information & Communication Technology and Sales are SEEK categories, while IT Services and IT Consulting and Software Development are employer industries. They are separate groups, not one inside another. We will refresh the analysis as the catalog grows.
How Applier handles this
We apply. Then we email the hiring manager from your Gmail. We find open roles matching your profile, tailor your resume, write a new cover letter for each and submit on the employer's own application form. Follow-ups go out 3 and 7 business days later. Some applications can't be finished; these show as Failed in your dashboard. How Applier works.
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AWSFrequently asked questions
How many job listings are ghost jobs?
It depends on how you count. Greenhouse's own platform data puts 18 to 22 percent of jobs posted in a given quarter as ghost jobs, meaning no hiring activity followed. In Applier's job catalog on 4 November 2026, about 6 percent of open listings had been online for more than 30 days, rising to about 20 percent in the Information & Communication Technology category.
Which industries have the most stale job listings?
Among industries with at least 1,000 open listings in Applier's job catalog on 4 November 2026, the Information & Communication Technology category (20.2 percent) and Sales (10.9 percent) had the highest stale shares, and advertising services (2.1 percent) and hospitals and health care (2.8 percent) the lowest. Smaller industries ranged from 0 to 38 percent.
Is a reposted job a ghost job?
Not necessarily. A repost can mean the first search didn't find the right person, a new budget cycle or an ongoing pipeline. It is worth a closer look: if a role keeps coming back, find out whether anyone is being hired for it before you spend hours on an application.
How can I check whether a job posting is still live?
Look at the posting date, see whether the same role appears on the employer's own careers site, and run the link through Applier's free ghost job checker, which shows whether the posting looks live, closed, stale or reposted.