SearchSteward Hiring Pulse — June 2026

A monthly read on the live job market, measured directly from company career pages. SearchSteward tracks roughly 16,000 employer career pages every day, so these numbers reflect what companies are actually posting in near-real-time — not survey data or job-aggregator counts.

Headline numbers

• Postings have a short shelf life: the median is gone in about 15 days. Across 30,827 postings tracked open → close, 38.6% disappeared within a week and 83.5% within a month. A quarter were gone in under six days.
• The most in-demand role, by number of distinct companies hiring, is Software Engineer (1,220 companies) — followed by Product Manager (798) and Account Executive (710).
• AI is reshaping the title map: AI Engineer (303) and Machine Learning Engineer (268) mean ~570 companies are hiring specifically to build AI — a category that barely existed as a distinct title a year ago.
• Ghost Job Index: 2.9% of currently-open postings show ghost-job signals — computed across 354,795 open postings (see methodology below).

1. The window is short — speed beats volume

We watched 30,827 postings open → close (June 2026):

Median lifespan ≈ 15 days; 25% gone in under six. The takeaway for job-seekers: a posting being live is not a guarantee it is still genuinely open — apply early, not "this weekend." See the full breakdown in How Long Do Job Postings Stay Up?

2. Where demand actually is (ranked by distinct companies, not raw posting counts)

Raw posting counts are easy to game — one company can spam 500 listings. Ranking by how many different companies want each role filters that out.

AI-adjacent roles (~570 companies across AI/ML Engineer) and brand-new titles like Forward Deployed Engineer signal a market that isn't just smaller — it's being re-shaped. More in The Most In-Demand Jobs Right Now.

3. The Ghost Job Index: 2.9%

Our signature, ownable metric. Using the same heuristics behind the free ghost-job checker, we scored 354,795 currently-open postings. 2.9% trip at least one higher-confidence ghost-job or scam signal.

A posting shows "ghost-job signals" when it meets criteria such as: reposted repeatedly over 90+ days, open for an extended period with no status change, no compensation listed, a generic or duplicate description, or scam markers like an upfront-payment or sensitive-information request. We call these signals, not accusations — we never claim a specific employer is acting in bad faith. (A broader 37.4% of open postings show at least one weaker signal, most commonly no salary listed or a very thin description.)

Tracked monthly, this becomes a trend line: whether ghost-job signals are rising or falling is itself a signal about the health of the hiring market.

The bottom line

The job market moves faster than it looks: the best-fit role and the still-open role are often the same role, for about two weeks. That's exactly what we built SearchSteward to handle — it watches your target companies' career pages and scores every new opening against your background, so you see the handful worth your attention on day one (and skip the ghost jobs). Start free at searchsteward.com.

Methodology: counts reflect distinct companies with an active posting across the ~16,000 employer career pages SearchSteward tracks, June 2026. Shelf-life figures from 30,827 postings observed open → close. The Ghost Job Index reflects 354,795 open postings scored with heuristic signals (missing pay, very thin description, repeat reposting, upfront-payment or sensitive-info requests, generic/duplicate text); it is a set of heuristic indicators, not a determination of any employer's intent. A snapshot of SearchSteward's coverage, not a claim about the entire labor market. Press inquiries: [email protected].