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By the Numbers

BLS JOLTS for June 2026 recorded 7.4 million job openings against 5.3 million hires that month — a gap of roughly 2.1 million, though this is NOT a ghost-job count since JOLTS openings can be genuine but simply unfilled by month-end (BLS, released August 4, 2026).

This is a quantitative stock-take of the U.S. hiring funnel: how many job postings are estimated to be non-genuine, how many applicants compete per role, how often applicants get a response, and how long positions actually take to fill. The honest headline is that the denominator itself is contested — no single government series measures ghost jobs directly, so every prevalence estimate is a private-vendor construct with its own definition.

The most trustworthy number in this space is also the least dramatic: the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). For June 2026, BLS reported job openings little changed at 7.4 million, hires unchanged at 5.3 million, and total separations at 5.4 million. The annual average hires rate for 2025 was 3.3%, down from 3.4% in 2024, and by February 2026 the hires rate had fallen to 3.1% — the lowest since April 2020 per BLS JOLTS data cited in industry benchmarking. This is a confidential, mandatory federal survey, which the Congressional Research Service noted in an April 2025 report gives it more truth-telling incentive than voluntary online job-board data, since the same distortions that produce ghost postings online don't apply to a confidential government survey. But JOLTS openings-minus-hires is not a ghost-job measure: an opening can be genuine and simply unfilled at month's end, filled the following month, or eliminated by a hiring freeze. The Congressional Research Service was explicit that there are no official statistics on the magnitude of ghost jobs, and that the private studies analyzing this question use varying, often undisclosed methodologies that make it difficult to assess data quality across studies.

Prevalence estimates for ghost jobs therefore span a wide range depending entirely on what is being measured. A 2025 Greenhouse platform-data study, which measured actual employer posting behavior on its applicant-tracking system, put the figure at 18% to 22% of postings. A September 2025 ResumeUp.AI study, using a different method — treating any LinkedIn posting active more than 30 days as a likely ghost job — found that 27.4% of U.S. listings on that platform qualified, with Los Angeles the worst major metro at 30.5%. A widely cited Clarify Capital figure, built from employer self-reporting rather than platform outcome data, put the share of employers admitting to posting jobs with no current hiring intent close to one in three. These are not the same question: Greenhouse and ResumeUp.AI measure outcomes or listing characteristics on their own platforms, while Clarify Capital captures stated employer intent. None of the three is a nationally representative sample of the full U.S. online job market, and each vendor has a commercial incentive (selling ATS software, career-coaching services, or resume tools) to publicize a large, attention-getting number.

On the applicant-volume side, the strongest available benchmark on time-to-fill comes from the Society for Human Resource Management's 2026 Recruiting Benchmarking report, based on a survey SHRM fielded between November 2025 and January 2026: median time-to-fill for nonexecutive positions fell to 39 calendar days in 2026, down from 44 days in 2025, while executive time-to-fill held flat at 45 days, both well below the 60-day executive median SHRM recorded in 2022. SHRM further found that organizations using the most effective recruitment practices, including AI-assisted screening, filled roles roughly five days faster than the rest. This is a real, credentialed, membership-survey-based benchmark from the leading HR professional body — a materially stronger source than the applicants-per-posting figures circulating in the trade press, most of which trace back to individual job-board or resume-tool vendors (Ashby, Novorésumé citing Business Insider, Glassdoor) with no disclosed sampling methodology, and which disagree with each other by factors of two or more (100 to 340 applicants per posting depending on source). Given that disagreement and the absence of disclosed methodology behind any single figure, none of the applicants-per-role vendor numbers meet this analysis's sourcing bar and none are included as point estimates below.

Application-to-response rates show the same pattern: numbers circulating in trade coverage range from a 2% to 25% response rate depending on platform and source, with no single figure independently corroborated by two Tier 1-2 sources. What is more consistently documented is the regulatory response to the trust problem itself. As of 2026, California and New York have enacted or passed legislation requiring employers to disclose hiring timeframes or whether a posting reflects a genuine current vacancy, and Ontario, Canada has legislation effective January 2026 addressing both ghost postings and HR ghosting during interviews. The Congressional Research Service noted that deceptive job postings could theoretically fall under the FTC's Section 5 authority over unfair or deceptive practices, but flagged that proving an employer's deceptive intent — a legal requirement — is a substantial enforcement barrier, meaning the regulatory response is currently running ahead of any enforceable federal standard.

The claims behind this analysis, each with its verification status — including what is contested, unverified, or could not be established.

August 23, 2026

August 23, 2026

August 23, 2026