The Ghost Job Report · July 29, 2026
2,972 job postings on this board never close — and the average one that does lasts 11 days
Scope. These figures are a census of the 233,022 live postings VeritaHire tracks — read from 233,029 live postings and are recomputed each week. Nothing here is an estimate.What came down this week
Of the 233,029 postings currently browsable on VeritaHire, 38,125 disappeared from employer career pages in the seven days ending July 29, 2026. That is a substantial weekly churn, and most of it is probably good news: when a posting vanishes from an employer's own feed, the likeliest explanation is that the role was filled.
How long a posting really lasts
Looking at the 92,811 postings that came down over the past 30 days, 59 percent — that's 55,050 of them — had been live for two weeks or less. The average posting that came down this period lasted 11 days. That number matters more than it might seem. If you find a posting that is already two weeks old, you are, by these figures, already past the median life of a listing that closes. You are not necessarily too late, but you are no longer early.
The implication is not that employers are rejecting candidates quickly — it is that the window between posting and removal is short, and that window is when your application has the best chance of being read by someone who still has a decision to make.
The postings that never close
Not every posting that reappears has been filled. We track postings that have been taken down and put back up at least twice. Right now, 2,972 live postings fit that pattern, which is 1.3 percent of the current board. These are the listings most likely to function as standing pipelines — roles an employer fills on a rolling basis, or positions that keep opening as turnover continues. They are real jobs in the sense that the employer is genuinely interested in candidates, but applying to one is a different exercise than applying to a fresh posting. You may be entering a queue rather than competing for a single seat.
Who was hiring
The employers with the largest number of live postings this week were Domino's (3,689), Walgreens (1,682), Lowe's (1,672), Casey's General Stores (1,668), Allied Universal (1,649), TJ Maxx (1,273), BAE Systems (1,128), and Walmart (1,114). That Domino's sits at the top by a wide margin reflects franchise-model hiring: each store posts independently, so the aggregate count is high even when any individual location is hiring for one or two people.
By category, Healthcare led new live postings with 9,766, followed by Retail & Food Service at 9,331, Operations at 7,332, Sales at 6,678, Skilled Trades at 5,422, and Admin & Office at 4,638. Median pay, where employers disclosed it, varied considerably. Operations postings showed a median of $144k across 16,679 listings. Healthcare came in at $99k across 12,462. Skilled Trades and Admin & Office both landed at $52k. Sales sat at $41k and Retail & Food Service at $37k.
Nearly half the live board — 113,140 postings, or 49 percent — list no experience requirement. Of those, 7,119, or 6 percent, still ask for a bachelor's degree or higher. That combination is worth flagging plainly: a posting that says it requires no experience but then asks for a four-year degree is asking for something. Whether that requirement is enforced, waived, or simply boilerplate that survived editing is impossible to know from the outside, but applicants who skip those listings on the assumption they are unqualified may be passing over roles where the degree language is aspirational rather than mandatory.
What this means if you are applying
A few direct takeaways from this week's figures:
- Apply within the first week. With an average posting life of 11 days, a listing you find on day ten is likely in its final hours. Day one or two is meaningfully better than day seven.
- Check the employer's own careers page before you apply. If the posting is already gone there, it has likely been filled. We remove postings when we detect that, but there is always a lag.
- Treat reposted listings differently. The 2,972 evergreen-pattern postings on the current board are worth applying to, but set your expectations accordingly. You may not hear back promptly, and the role may refill multiple times.
- On degree requirements for entry-level roles: 6 percent of no-experience postings ask for a degree. Read those listings carefully before self-selecting out. The requirement may be firm or it may not be.
- Retail & Food Service dominates volume, but pay is at the low end of the categories we track. If pay is the deciding factor, Operations and Healthcare listings are where disclosed compensation runs highest.
Our counts come from reading employers' own job feeds and career pages directly. A posting left up after a hire has been made looks exactly like an active one to us, which is why no job board — including this one — can guarantee that every listing you see today still has someone reviewing applications.