The Zeltru Report

How long job postings are listed, month by month

This is our analysis of September 2026's job market. Every day we read 15,943 employers' own careers pages and count how long each posting has been listed.

Read Edition No. 2 Every editionEdition No. 2 · published October 1, 2026

Contents

What we found

Median time listed: 30 days; Half the postings had been listed this long or longer.; vs August: first month counted this way, so no comparison yet.
Listed 30 days or longer: 50.8%; Of dated postings at the employers we hold fixed.; vs August: first month counted this way, so no comparison yet.
Listed 90 days or longer, the careful figure: 13.6%; Postings uploaded in bulk under one date are not counted as long listed. 16.6% counting every one.; Counting every posting: +0.4 pts vs August, 16.6% against 16.2%
Postings counted: 492,340; At 1,012 of the 1,032 employers we hold fixed.; vs August: 460,693

Dated postings at the 1,032 employers we hold fixed from one month to the next, with ages counted to September 26, 2026. August is the night of our first edition, recounted under Edition No. 2's rules.

Half of the postings we can date have been up a month or longer.
50.8% of 492,340 dated postings at 1,012 employers, September 2026.
About 1 in 7 of the postings we can date has been up 3 months or longer.
13.6%, the careful figure, of the same 492,340 postings.
Two in three job titles name no level at all.
65.2% of 1,324,562 titles at every employer we publish.

Postings per day

August 2026September 2026Partial count

Each line is one month: how many postings the 1,032 employers we hold fixed dated on each day, using the date the employer gave. Most weekdays bring 15,000 to 18,000 new postings, and weekends about 1,000. Because the group of employers never changes, a month that runs higher than the one before means these employers posted more.

The dip on September 7 is Labor Day. The 14,370 employers we added on September 24 are outside this group, so they do not show here, and the changes recorded late on September 18 and 20 left posting dates as they were. August is dashed before the 20th, while we were still adding employers to the group, and the open dot marks September 30, a day still being read. An average of the months joins once there are three full months.

Show the daily figures

Postings dated each day by the employers we hold fixed
Day	August 2026	September 2026
1	739 (part)	25,938
2	510 (part)	18,305
3	11,827 (part)	16,899
4	20,368 (part)	14,084
5	12,116 (part)	1,097
6	12,175 (part)	738
7	11,761 (part)	5,414
8	708 (part)	18,225
9	737 (part)	16,936
10	15,274 (part)	15,667
11	15,249 (part)	14,874
12	14,181 (part)	941
13	16,998 (part)	976
14	13,885 (part)	17,034
15	1,015 (part)	16,214
16	976 (part)	15,158
17	18,479 (part)	15,307
18	18,646 (part)	15,126
19	18,889 (part)	1,130
20	17,491	1,042
21	15,226	17,791
22	1,092	15,655
23	1,115	17,680
24	18,008	16,198
25	17,497	13,666
26	16,276	1,030
27	16,799	2,857
28	16,193	16,862
29	1,226	15,951
30	967	3,232 (part)
31	16,965

Year to date

Postings dated each month

The same count added up by month. September is the first full month: our daily counts begin on July 24 and the group was whole from August 27, so July and August hold only part of what these employers posted. The last day of September was still being read when we took the reading, so its bar will rise a little. Each new month adds a bar, and from January 2027 the chart covers the whole year.

July 59,412, August 343,388, September 352,027. Striped months are partial. The last day of September was still being read.

Listed 90 days or longer, every posting counted

The share of these employers' dated postings that had been listed 90 days or longer on the night we read each month, with every posting counted. It was 16.2% in August and 16.6% in September, counted the same way. A higher share means more of the postings on their boards had been up three months or more.

July has no reading to compare. The careful figure, 13.6% this month, starts its own line from October.

By industry

Listed 90 days or longer, the careful figure, September 2026

Technology21.1%
Construction & Real Estate15.8%
Industrials15.5%
Insurance13.8%
Healthcare12.3%
Finance12.1%

The careful 90-day share for each industry with at least 20 of our fixed employers: postings uploaded in bulk under one date are not counted as long listed. Technology had the highest share, at 21.1%, and Finance the lowest, at 12.1%. This is the starting line: from the October edition, each industry is set beside its own September figure, so a change is a change in that industry.

How long postings have been listed

Share of postings by time listed, September 2026

0 to 7 days15.7%
8 to 30 days34.8%
31 to 60 days22.9%
61 to 90 days10%
91 to 180 days10.2%
181 to 365 days5%
over 365 days1.3%

How long each of the 492,340 dated postings at our fixed employers had been listed when we read them on September 26, 2026. Half had been up a month or longer. About 1 in 6 had been up 90 days or longer, or about 1 in 7 if postings uploaded in bulk under one date are not counted as long listed. These are the buckets our first two editions used. Elsewhere on the site, ages fall into three bands: under 30 days, 30 to 89 days, and 90 days or longer. Two of these buckets cross those lines, so the chart keeps one colour, and from the next edition the buckets follow the bands.

Shares sum to 100% up to rounding. The full table is in the edition.

Who is posting

Share of each platform's postings carrying a board date

Workday65.4%
Greenhouse12.2%
iCIMS52%
Oracle0%
SmartRecruiters0%
Ashby5.9%
BambooHR0%
Lever0%
ADP0%
Workable0%

Employers' careers pages run on hiring software from a handful of companies. This shows what share of each one's postings carry a posting date the employer's board publishes, across the 1,359,503 postings in our September reading. 6 of the 10 platforms supply no posting date we use, so every posting on them is a floor and not an age. One publishes a date this edition declines to use, because it records when a posting record was created, not when the job was advertised.

What job titles say about level

Two in three job titles (65.2%, 863,372 postings) name no level, and aren't shown below.

Manager10.9%
Senior7.2%
Entry3.9%
Lead3.1%
Director2.7%
Intern2.2%
Mid1.9%
Staff or principal1.5%
Executive0.8%

What 1,324,562 job titles at every employer we publish say about level, read from the title alone. Each bar is a share of all of those titles, so together the nine come to 34.1%. Of the titles that name a level, manager is the most common, then senior. This describes how jobs are titled. The level of the work itself can differ.

Every edition

Latest · Edition No. 2
September 2026
Median time listed 30 days. 13.6% listed 90 days or longer, the careful figure.
Read the edition
Edition No. 1
August 2026
Our first edition, published September 1, 2026.
Read the edition The short version
From the archive
Archived Greenhouse boards, 2023 to 2024
What a fixed group of archived boards recorded between sightings, and its limits.
Read the study

How we measure

What we read

Employers' own careers pages, every day.

What we count

How long each posting has been listed, from the date its board shows.

What we don't claim

Whether a job is still open, or whether anyone was hired.

Methodology How we checked