Nearly 1 in 3 direct-employer job ads has been live for at least two months
Careeronaut rechecked 29,281 vacancies directly on employer hiring systems. 8,203 were still live at least 60 days after their original posting date.
Live for at least 60 days
8,203 current direct-employer listings
Careeronaut's live vacancy monitor found that 28% of current direct-employer job ads had been open for at least 60 days. The analysis covers 29,281 unique listings across 18 applicant-tracking platforms, all observed live again within the previous seven days.
Long-running listings are especially common in technology, where 40.9% had passed 60 days, and engineering, at 38.2%. Sales was much lower at 21%. Across the full snapshot, 5,608 ads (19.2%) had been live for at least 90 days.
Unique live ads checked
18 direct employer ATS platforms
Live for at least 90 days
5,608 current listings
Technology ads at 60+ days
2,350 of 5,749 live technology ads
Vacancy age ledger / live employer ads
Persistent listings cluster in technical work
Share of current direct-employer ads still live 60 days after their original posting date.
Technology
5,749 live
40.9%
Engineering
1,679 live
38.2%
Construction
391 live
38.1%
Hr
226 live
36.3%
Healthcare
2,985 live
35.3%
Legal
358 live
34.4%
Design
400 live
29.0%
Marketing
772 live
28.6%
Science
470 live
23.4%
Finance
996 live
22.5%
Admin
7,126 live
21.2%
Sales
3,799 live
21.0%
Customer Service
1,883 live
19.4%
Manufacturing
485 live
19.4%
Education
200 live
19.0%
Logistics
415 live
18.1%
Retail
1,255 live
17.8%
The vacancy count job seekers see is not the same as the number of newly available opportunities. A substantial share of current inventory has persisted through at least two months of employer hiring cycles.
That does not prove the ads are fake or that employers have no intention of hiring. Some roles are genuinely hard to fill, support continuous recruitment or remain open while multiple candidates are hired. But it does show why a raw count of live ads can overstate how much of the market is new.
For applicants, posting age is useful context rather than an automatic reason to avoid a role. A recent listing may move faster, while an older listing deserves an extra check that the employer is still actively progressing candidates.
A job board can look busy while much of its inventory has been sitting there for months. The useful distinction for applicants is not simply whether an ad is online, but whether the opportunity is new, persistent or continuously recruiting.
Engineering ads at 60+ days
641 of 1,679
Sales ads at 60+ days
798 of 3,799
Careeronaut froze this snapshot on August 13, 2026. It included active listings pulled directly from 18 employer applicant-tracking platforms and observed again during the previous 7 days. Aggregators, syndication feeds and USAJOBS were excluded.
The analysis retained 29,281 unique listings after removing 517 cross-source duplicates using Careeronaut's job fingerprint. A listing entered the 30-, 60- or 90-day group when its source-supplied original posting date was at least that old and it was still live at the snapshot date.
A listing that remains live for 60 days is not automatically a ghost job. It may reflect continuous hiring, a difficult-to-fill role, a long recruitment process or a posting that was not promptly removed.
The analysis covers employers and ATS platforms represented in Careeronaut's inventory. It is a large current sample, not a census of every US vacancy, and category comparisons can be affected by the employer mix on each platform.
Posting dates are the dates supplied by each ATS. Employers and platforms may handle reposted, refreshed and evergreen vacancies differently.
Aggregators, syndication feeds and USAJOBS were excluded. A listing counted as live had to remain active and be observed again by Careeronaut during the seven days before the snapshot.
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Download the complete category-level CSV from the chart above. The Careeronaut team can also share the complete frozen snapshot or run a custom slice of the dataset on request. Editorial inquiries: press@careeronaut.com.