How long do job postings stay open? What 31,590 closed listings show
Half of the job postings we watched close were gone within 6 days of going up. If a role looks like a fit, the window to apply is measured in days, not weeks.
The short version
- Across 31,590 postings we tracked until they closed, the median lifespan was 6 days.
- 61% of closed postings were gone within a week; 87% within two weeks.
- Fastest to close: Software Engineer (6 days), Customer Service Representative (6 days), Business Development (6 days).
- Longest-lived: Translator / Interpreter (11 days), Mobile Developer (9 days), Web Developer (8 days).
Median days open, by role
Every role below had at least 50 closed postings in our inventory. Each role links to its live openings.
Why postings disappear this fast
A posting rarely stays up until the seat is filled. Most close much earlier: the pipeline fills within days, recruiters cap applications once they have a workable shortlist, and applicant tracking systems auto-close listings at a threshold. Some postings are pulled because plans changed, and repostings restart the clock under a new listing. Whatever the reason, the practical effect for applicants is the same: the posting you bookmarked for the weekend often no longer accepts applications by the time you return to it.
What this means for your applications
Applying early is not a small edge. An application that lands in the first day or two is read while the shortlist is still empty; the same application a week later competes with a pipeline that may already be in interviews. The uncomfortable math of a 6-day median is that checking job boards weekly means half of your matches are already gone. That is the exact gap Reach exists to close: it watches new openings daily, and applies to your matches as soon as they appear rather than when you next have a free evening.
Methodology
Computed September 12, 2026 from 31,590 postings that closed between August 01, 2026 and September 11, 2026, out of 313,206 live postings Reach tracks across job boards, company career pages, and public APIs. Lifespan is measured from the employer-stated posting date to the day our automated check first saw the posting gone (page removed, marked closed, or redirecting away). Close detection is deliberately conservative: a temporarily unreachable page does not count as closed, so if anything these figures overstate how long postings stay open. Postings still open at the time of writing are excluded, a posting can count toward more than one role, and lifespans over 120 days are treated as repostings and excluded. Figures refresh roughly monthly on this page.