Half of job postings disappear from the employer's own board within 28 days. JobShifu measures this by crawling employer applicant-tracking systems directly rather than buying a job feed, so it sees a requisition appear and then disappear from the employer's own board.
Of 1,649,761 postings across 23,833 employers, 86% are still up after a week, 75% after two weeks, and 40% after a month.
By function
| Function | Postings | Employers | Still up at 7d | Still up at 14d | Still up at 30d | Half gone by (days) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (not tagged) | 530,412 | 14,841 | 84% | 73% | 39% | 27 |
| Software Engineering | 140,933 | 8,744 | 83% | 74% | 43% | 28 |
| Sales & Account Mgmt | 111,870 | 6,897 | 91% | 82% | 40% | 28 |
| Nursing & Allied Health | 100,326 | 1,962 | 90% | 79% | 45% | 29 |
| Skilled Trades & Mfg | 98,608 | 4,172 | 89% | 80% | 42% | 28 |
| Medical & Clinical | 92,490 | 2,725 | 89% | 79% | 43% | 28 |
| Operations & Admin | 87,767 | 6,558 | 83% | 69% | 32% | 25 |
| Data & Analytics | 70,782 | 6,622 | 81% | 70% | 35% | 26 |
| Retail | 68,770 | 1,102 | 88% | 76% | 31% | 25 |
| Logistics & Warehouse | 62,721 | 3,270 | 88% | 77% | 33% | 27 |
| Finance & Accounting | 57,920 | 5,620 | 90% | 80% | 46% | 29 |
| Customer Support | 47,540 | 4,987 | 79% | 67% | 34% | 25 |
| Food & Hospitality | 44,126 | 1,509 | 89% | 79% | 43% | 28 |
| Engineering | 38,877 | 2,639 | 91% | 84% | 53% | 34 |
| Project & Program Mgmt | 23,973 | 3,783 | 88% | 79% | 44% | 28 |
| Marketing | 21,992 | 5,146 | 88% | 78% | 38% | 28 |
| Design | 14,502 | 3,508 | 89% | 80% | 43% | 28 |
| Education | 14,399 | 1,388 | 87% | 77% | 30% | 27 |
| Product | 11,698 | 3,029 | 90% | 83% | 48% | 29 |
| HR & Recruiting | 10,055 | 3,417 | 86% | 75% | 36% | 27 |
By seniority
| Seniority | Postings | Employers | Still up at 7d | Still up at 14d | Still up at 30d | Half gone by (days) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mid | 1,071,593 | 19,614 | 86% | 75% | 39% | 27 |
| manager | 153,685 | 9,129 | 87% | 76% | 40% | 28 |
| senior | 121,953 | 9,033 | 88% | 79% | 45% | 29 |
| entry | 113,607 | 5,305 | 82% | 70% | 36% | 26 |
| lead | 61,408 | 5,623 | 87% | 77% | 43% | 28 |
| director | 56,240 | 6,972 | 90% | 81% | 43% | 28 |
| intern | 33,845 | 3,158 | 86% | 74% | 41% | 28 |
| staff | 33,757 | 3,803 | 90% | 82% | 46% | 29 |
| exec | 3,673 | 1,396 | 90% | 80% | 44% | 28 |
What a rate cannot tell you
A rate describes a market. It cannot tell you whether the posting you are looking at is one of them. That is a different question, and it is settled by one requisition's own crawl history: the date the posting was first seen, whether the same requisition was listed before, and how long it has been up since.
Common questions
How long does a job posting usually stay open?
Half of job postings are gone from the employer's own board within 28 days. Across 1,649,761 postings at 23,833 employers, 86% were still up after a week, 75% after two weeks, and 40% after a month.
Should I apply to a job that was posted a month ago?
Usually yes. 40% of postings are still live on the employer's own board at 30 days, so an older posting is closer to a coin flip than a dead end. The age shown on a job board is a weaker signal than the employer's own page, because boards keep listings up after the employer has taken them down.
Why do other sources say job postings close much faster?
Because most postings have not closed yet, and averaging only the ones that have drops every long-lived posting. 60.5% of the postings observed here were still up when the measurement window ended. Counting only closed postings reports roughly half the real figure. These numbers use a Kaplan-Meier survival estimate, which counts a posting as evidence for as long as it was actually watched.
Which kinds of jobs stay posted the longest?
Engineering roles stay up longest of the larger categories, with half still open at 34 days and 53% still up after a month. Operations & Admin roles move fastest, at 25 days.
Do senior roles stay open longer than entry-level ones?
Slightly. Senior postings are half gone by 29 days against 26 days for entry-level, and 45% of senior postings are still up at a month versus 36% of entry-level ones. The gap is real but small next to the variation between job functions.
How this was measured
A posting's life here is the time it stayed visible: from the first time the crawl saw it on the employer's applicant-tracking system to the last. That is deliberately an observation rather than an inference. JobShifu does not know when an employer decided to stop hiring, only when the posting stopped being there, so the figure is stated as what was seen.
Most of these postings have not closed yet, and that changes the arithmetic. 60.5% of the 1,649,761 postings observed between 2026-06-23 and 2026-08-21 were still up when the window ended. Simply averaging the ones that did close would drop every long-lived posting and report roughly half the real figure. These numbers use a Kaplan-Meier survival estimate, which counts a posting that is still up as evidence for as long as it was watched, and stops counting it there.
Why there is no average. An average lifespan needs the whole distribution including its long tail, and the tail has not happened yet. What can be stated honestly from 59 days of observation is the share still up at a given age, and the age by which half are gone. Anything beyond that would be extrapolation wearing a number's clothes.
Any figure resting on fewer than 25 postings still being watched at that age, or on fewer than 5 employers, is withheld rather than shown. That floor is applied at each age, not once at the top, because the group still being watched shrinks as the age rises.
Data and citation
Every figure above comes from one snapshot file, published so the numbers can be checked, replotted or reused: lifespan.json (JSON, updated 2026-08-21). It is the same file this page is built from, so there is no version of these numbers that is not in it.
License. CC BY 4.0. Use the figures anywhere, including commercially, as long as JobShifu is credited.
Cite as. JobShifu (2026). How long job postings stay open. https://jobshifu.com/research/how-long-jobs-stay-open