How long does it take to hear back after applying for a job?

We can't measure employer replies — no site can see inside a hiring inbox. What we can measure is the posting: of 267,708 postings we watched come down between July 24, 2026 and September 8, 2026, half had been listed 21 days or less when they were removed, and a quarter were still up after 42 days.

Does a job posting still being up mean I haven't been rejected?

No. A posting staying up doesn't mean your application is still being considered, and a posting coming down doesn't mean the role was filled. Employers remove postings when a role is filled, cancelled, frozen, or simply when a listing expires on a schedule.

How long should I wait before following up on a job application?

There is no measured answer to this and we won't invent one. One thing you can check is whether the posting is still live — if it has been listed far longer than typical, the employer's hiring timeline is likely longer than the posting suggests.

How long does it take to hear back after applying?

Half the job postings we watched come down were removed within 21 days of the date the employer’s own careers page gave for them — and a quarter were still up after 42 days.

That is a posting lifespan, not a reply time. We can’t see whether anyone answered you, and neither can any other site: replies happen inside an employer’s inbox. What we can do is tell you whether the thing you applied to still exists.

267,708 postings watched come down1,058 employers, July 24, 2026 – September 8, 2026; no fleet read on August 23, 2026, August 31, 2026; 4 more days not confirmed complete (see Methodology)as of September 8, 2026How we measure

What we can actually measure

21 days

Median age at removal, across 267,708 postings we watched come down

10–42 days

The middle half of those removals — a quarter came down sooner, a quarter later

13.2%

Came down within a week of being posted (35,430 of 267,708)

These come from watching public careers pages every day and recording the day each posting stops appearing. Because we hold the employer’s own posted date and the day it went, the age is measured end to end rather than from whenever we started looking.

The spread is the part worth sitting with. A 21-day median sounds like a tidy answer until you notice that 13.2% of postings came down inside a week and 37.9% had been up for a month or more when they went. There is no “normal” hiring clock to be behind.

The posting is still up. Does that mean anything?

Less than people hope, in both directions. Right now 50.5% of the 524,322 postings we track have been listed 30 days or longer, and 19.1% have been listed 90 days or longer. A listing that is still live three weeks after you applied is completely ordinary and is not evidence about your application either way.

The one reading it does support: if a posting has been up dramatically longer than typical, the employer’s timeline for that role is probably longer than the posting implies — whatever the reason. You can check any specific posting with the tool below, or see the full distribution on how long job postings stay open.

What to do with this, briefly

The generic advice is generic for a reason and we won’t pad it out: follow up once, in writing, after a week or two; keep applying while you wait; and don’t read a silent inbox as a verdict on you.

The one thing this site adds is a fact you can actually check rather than guess at — whether the role you applied for is still being advertised, and for how long it has been.

Is the posting you applied to still up?

What this doesn’t tell you

This is not a reply time. We measure postings on public careers pages. We have no visibility into applications, recruiter inboxes, or applicant tracking systems, so nothing here can tell you when — or whether — a particular employer will get back to you.

Long-lived postings are under-counted in that 21-day figure. We only see removals that happened inside our observation window, which currently runs July 24, 2026 to September 8, 2026. A posting that stays up for two years is invisible to that measurement until the day it comes down. Read 21 days as a floor on typical lifespan rather than an estimate of it.

A removal is not a decision. When a posting disappears we know the link stopped resolving. We do not know whether the role was filled, cancelled, paused, or moved to a different board.