Most 'Active' Job Postings Aren't Fresh: 56% Have Been Listed Over a Month
Based on 249,741+ analyzed job listings · Updated 2026-07-23
Everyone has applied to a job that never replied. We wanted to know how much of that is timing. We took 30,000 active postings from a live corpus of roughly 250,000 and measured how long each had been listed. The result: 'active' rarely means 'new.' Only 9% appeared in the last week, and more than half have been sitting for over a month.
30,000
Active postings analyzed
Live sample from a corpus of ~250,000 active listings
2.6%
Added in the last 24 hours
Only about 1 in 40 postings is brand new on a given day
9%
Added in the last 7 days
The genuinely fresh share of the market
56%
Listed more than 30 days
The majority of 'active' jobs have been up for over a month
How old are 'active' job postings?
Share of a 30,000-posting sample by how long each has been listed (measured from when it first entered our index). Bands are separate and add up to 100%.
The freshness breakdown
Of 30,000 active postings: 2.6% first appeared in the last 24 hours, 9% within the last 7 days, and 31.9% within the last 30 days. The remaining 56.5% have been listed for more than a month. So on any given day, the pool you are applying into is dominated by listings that have been open for weeks, not the handful posted since you last looked.
Why so many old postings stay up
Older listings survive for a few reasons, and they are not all sinister. Some roles are genuinely hard to fill and stay open for months. Some are evergreen pipelines a company keeps live to collect resumes for a role it hires continuously. Some are filled and simply never taken down, especially on aggregators that mirror a company's site. And some are real but have already accumulated hundreds of applicants, so a late application lands at the bottom of a very tall pile.
How we measured it
We measured age by when a posting first appeared in our index, which closely tracks when it went live but is not the employer's exact posting date. Figures are the share of a 30,000-posting sample drawn from a live corpus of about 250,000 active listings across 47 job boards. We report first-seen age, not last-updated, because a listing that gets re-scraped daily can look new every day without the underlying job changing.
What to do with this
Treat freshness as a filter, not an afterthought. A job posted in the last few days is far more likely to get a real, timely response than one live for two months. Sort by date where you can, prioritize the newest postings, and stop reading silence on a 60-day-old listing as a verdict on you. When you find a role that fits, the faster you apply, the less buried you are. Upload your resume to Seeker to match against the freshest listings for your target roles instead of scrolling stale boards.
Frequently asked questions
How many job postings are actually recent?
In a sample of 30,000 active postings, only 2.6% appeared in the last 24 hours and 9% in the last 7 days. About 56% have been listed for more than 30 days, so most active jobs are not fresh.
Are old job postings ghost jobs?
Not always. Some are hard-to-fill roles, some are evergreen pipelines that collect resumes, some are filled and never removed, and some are real but already have hundreds of applicants. A listing being old is a reason to prioritize fresher ones, not proof it is fake.
Should I apply to jobs posted a long time ago?
You can, but prioritize fresh listings. A job posted in the last few days is far more likely to get a timely response than one open for 60 days, where you may be applicant number 400. Apply early where you can.
See where you stand
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Guides
Data derived from Seeker's job corpus of 249,741+ listings across multiple sources. Updated 2026-07-23. Individual results vary based on resume content, target market, and role specifics.