One chart sums up the job search bitterness we’ve heard from 750 people who are looking for work

Four years, 1,000 applications, and a dozen interviews. As their job searches drag on, Americans tell Business Insider they’re wondering if companies want to fill open roles at all.

Since last fall, BI has heard from more than 750 struggling job seekers, ranging between the ages of 18 and 76. Many shared frustrations about open roles they suspect were never filled — either because the posting stayed up for months, or the company went silent after they applied or interviewed.

“There are some firms on LinkedIn that are always advertising the same position and have been for almost a year now,” Felipe Martins previously told Business Insider, before his 15-month job search ended. “I’ve applied to these positions at least half a dozen times now.”

Martins’ frustrations echo a trend that’s become more common in recent years: job postings are taking longer to be filled, if they’re filled at all. It’s a key part of the US hiring slowdown — and why it’s taking longer for many Americans to find work, even as the unemployment rate remains low, said Stephanie Hao, a senior economist at the workforce analytics provider Revelio Labs.

In October 2019, about 91% of job postings from companies in the Russell 3000 — a stock market index that monitors the performance of the 3,000 largest US public firms — were filled within six months, per data shared with BI by Revelio Labs. Of the jobs posted in October 2024, fewer than half were filled within the same six-month timeframe. Revelio Labs tracks job postings on the websites of Russell 3000 companies and cross-references them with LinkedIn profiles to estimate how many roles were filled.

Additionally, job postings from these companies have fallen from a peak of over 950,000 in 2022 to roughly 650,000 as of March, per Revelio data.

“Companies might leave job postings up, even when they have little intention of hiring, especially in uncertain labor markets,” Hao said.

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Why companies aren’t filling open jobs

Hao said that some companies may have posted jobs they intended to fill, but heightened economic uncertainty in recent months caused them to pause or scrap those plans. Caution around inflation, tariffs, AI, and federal spending cuts has many CEOs using “the P-word.”

Many job seekers BI heard from pointed to ghost jobs — positions posted online that companies aren’t actively hiring for — as a key reason for their long job searches. However, Hao said roles that go unfilled due to economic conditions aren’t quite ghost jobs.

“There’s a difference between companies that put up postings with the intention to hire — and they don’t end up hiring anyone due to not being able to find a good candidate or economic uncertainty — and not really having an intention of hiring somebody,” Hao said.

She added that ghost jobs may be posted to give the impression that the company is growing, to keep a pipeline of potential candidates open, or to give overworked staff hope that their employers will soon hire help.

In some cases, companies might be hesitant to commit to hiring plans, but want to be prepared if they decide to move forward, so they’ll post a job just in case, Hao said.

“While companies may not be actively hiring, they may still want to build a talent pipeline for the future, or may reconsider if an especially qualified candidate applies,” she added.

Regardless of why a company isn’t filling a role, it all adds up to frustration for the applicants in limbo.

Looking ahead, Hao said it’s difficult to forecast the hiring landscape, but unless economic conditions change, many job openings could remain unfilled.

“Companies may not know what the hiring situation will look like, so I think it benefits them to always have a pipeline of people they can reach out to if they do end up hiring for a specific role,” Hao said.

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