Skip to content

Ghost Job Index

A weekly, privacy-safe pulse on junk listings, ghost signals, and source quality in our remote job corpus.

As of August 18, 2026, 2.4% of 3,901 remote listings still being advertised by their source had an apply link that was already dead. Source: JobiQueue Ghost Job Index.

Updated August 18, 2026 (UTC). How we calculate this

Dead on arrival

2.4% of 3,901 listings still being advertised by their source had an apply link that was already dead: the destination returned 404 or 410, or said the role was closed.

Share of listings still being advertised by their source in the last 7 days whose apply link returns 404/410 or a page stating the role is closed.

Restricted to listings seen in the last 7 days on purpose. Across all checked listings the rate is far higher, but that reflects their age rather than any board's behaviour, because links are checked oldest-first.

Listings in corpus

11,319

Week of 2026-08-11 → 2026-08-18

Listed 30+ days

14.4%

2,631 of 18,295 roles · median 2d

Low-quality / junk signals

4.4%

497 listings flagged

Repeat sightings

8,272

Listings re-observed across ingests (not confirmed reposts)

Top junk patterns

  • All-lowercase multi-word company name99.4%
  • Generic or placeholder company name85.5%
  • Urgent / ASAP / reputed-company title patterns9.1%
  • Very short job description0.4%

Trust signal mix

Withheld until enough listings have been scanned to report a meaningful distribution (minimum 30; currently 3). We would rather show nothing than a percentage built on a sample this small.

Junk rate by source

Sources with at least 20 listings. Board names only, with no employer or listing identifiers.

Junk rate by job board source
SourceListingsFlaggedJunk rateTier
serpapi_google_jobs1,99849624.8%unknown
reed2,15940.2%trusted
arbeitnow2,21720.1%trusted
devitjobs_uk17,04330%trusted
jobicy4,22000%trusted
weworkremotely3,40600%trusted
remoteok1,61700%trusted
workingnomads1,51700%trusted
findwork1,02300%trusted
remotive92500%trusted
themuse87500%trusted

Check a listing before you apply

Paste any job URL into our free Trust Scan for scam, ghost, and apply-link signals on demand.

Run a free trust scan

Last updated August 18, 2026 (UTC). Methodology v2026-07. Aggregates only. No job titles, company names, URLs, emails, or user data.

Cite this index

These figures are free to quote with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Please include the date. The corpus is re-measured continuously, so numbers shift between snapshots.

Claim
As of August 18, 2026, 2.4% of 3,901 remote listings still being advertised by their source had an apply link that was already dead. Source: JobiQueue Ghost Job Index.
Citation
JobiQueue. "Ghost Job Index." August 18, 2026. https://jobiqueue.com/ghost-job-index
Method
A role (normalized company + title) counted as continuously listed from first sighting to most recent sighting. Full methodology
Known limits
Observation window is 110 days, so the longest continuously-listed figure (110 days) is censored by how far back the corpus reaches rather than being a natural ceiling. Counts cover roles JobiQueue ingests, not the whole job market.