# How long do entry level jobs stay open? 6 in 10 disappear within 60 days

Published 2026-09-06. Updated 2026-09-06. [Hotfix Blog](https://hotfix.jobs/blog)

Across 3,796 postings for entry level candidates tracked by Hotfix, 59.9% disappeared from the employer's ATS within 60 days. Remote openings moved fastest, and internships do not explain the result.

How long do entry level jobs stay open? In Hotfix data, most are gone within two months.

Of 3,796 jobs for entry level candidates posted between March 1 and June 30, 2026, 59.9% disappeared from the employer's public applicant tracking system within 60 days. Nearly a third disappeared within 30 days. Half of the full set had disappeared by day 48.5.

Entry level listings moved faster than every major individual contributor tier. Within 60 days, 46.5% of mid level jobs had disappeared, compared with 49.8% of senior jobs, 41.9% of principal jobs, and 38.5% of staff jobs.

Removal does not prove that an employer hired someone. A job can leave an ATS because it was filled, withdrawn, frozen, or canceled. The result measures the window in which a posting remained publicly available. For a candidate starting out, that window is short: waiting several weeks to apply means waiting through much of the listing's typical public life.

## How long entry level jobs stay open

Of the 3,796 entry level postings in the analysis, 1,202 disappeared within 30 days and 2,275 disappeared within 60 days.

Chart: Share of postings removed from the employer's ATS within 60 days, by seniority.

- Entry level: 59.9%
- Senior: 49.8%
- Mid level: 46.5%
- Principal: 41.9%
- Staff: 38.5%

The comparison runs against the usual assumption about hiring speed. Senior and specialized jobs require more screening, more interviews, and a smaller candidate pool. Entry level jobs draw more applicants and usually have fewer approval steps. Their public listings turn over first.

SHRM's 2026 recruiting benchmark places the median time to fill for nonexecutive jobs at 39 calendar days. Hotfix found a median public lifespan of 48.5 days for entry level postings, but the measures are not equivalent. SHRM measures a hiring process that ends in a filled position. Hotfix observes only when a listing stops appearing publicly.

The proximity is useful context, not proof that each removed listing produced a hire.

## What we measured

The analysis covers jobs posted from March 1 through June 30, 2026 at companies tracked by Hotfix across Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, and other supported applicant tracking systems. Every posting had at least 60 days to remain active before the September 5 query cutoff.

Hotfix records a deactivation when a later crawl no longer finds a listing on the source ATS. For this analysis, a job counts as removed only when its deactivation reason is `removed_from_ats`. We excluded administrative changes such as duplicate consolidation, revised classification, ATS migration, company pauses, and internal filtering.

The denominator includes jobs that remained active beyond 60 days and jobs removed from the ATS after that point. It excludes administrative removals that do not describe the life of the source posting.

The median lifespan is the point at which removals crossed half of the full set of 3,796 postings. Listings still active at the cutoff remain in the denominator, avoiding the downward bias that would come from calculating a median only among removed jobs.

Seniority comes from Hotfix's normalized job taxonomy. The entry level category includes explicit junior, associate, intern, new graduate, and entry level titles, plus generic titles whose descriptions set an experience floor suited to candidates early in their careers.

The data does not reveal why a posting disappeared. It also records the date Hotfix observed the removal, which can follow the employer's actual change by the interval between crawls.

## Entry level postings consistently moved fastest

The headline result appears in every complete month in the window. The removal rate within 60 days rose from 57.5% in March to 61.5% in June.

Chart: Share of entry level postings removed from the employer's ATS within 60 days, by posting month.

- Removed within 60 days: Mar 57.5%, Apr 59.8%, May 60.4%, Jun 61.5%

The movement is modest, but its direction matters. Entry level listings did not stay available longer as spring turned into summer. The public window shortened by four percentage points across the period.

Indeed's February 2026 labor market update found that overall time to hire was lengthening as employer leverage increased. Fewer openings per unemployed worker gave companies more room to screen applicants and wait for a preferred candidate. The Hotfix result sits beside that broader trend: hiring can take longer while a public entry level listing disappears quickly.

Those facts are compatible. Recruiting can continue after a listing closes. An employer can stop accepting applicants once the pipeline is full, then spend weeks screening, interviewing, and negotiating.

## Remote openings for entry level candidates disappear fastest

Remote entry level jobs had a 71.2% removal rate within 60 days. Hybrid jobs reached 60.5%. Onsite jobs reached 50.9%.

Chart: Share of entry level postings removed from the employer's ATS within 60 days, by work arrangement.

- Remote: 71.2%
- Hybrid: 60.5%
- Onsite: 50.9%

The gap of 20 percentage points between remote and onsite openings is the sharpest practical finding in the data. A remote entry level listing has a seven in ten chance of disappearing within two months.

Remote work already represents a thinner entry point. Hotfix previously found that [only 6.9% of remote tech engineering jobs were entry level](https://hotfix.jobs/blog/entry-level-tech-eng-share-mid-2026), compared with 15.1% of onsite jobs. The smaller market for remote entry level roles also moves faster once jobs appear.

That does not establish a cause. Remote listings can receive larger applicant pools, but Hotfix does not observe application counts. Employer mix, job function, geography, and recruiting process can also contribute. The result at listing level remains: candidates searching [remote software engineering roles](https://hotfix.jobs/browse/remote/software-engineer) have less time to act on openings for entry level candidates.

## Internships do not explain the result

Internships often recruit on fixed calendars and can close as soon as an employer fills a class. That makes them an obvious explanation for the gap.

They are not the explanation here.

The analysis includes 98 postings classified as internships after administrative removals were excluded. Of those, 61.2% disappeared within 60 days. Among the other 3,698 entry level postings, 59.9% disappeared within 60 days.

Removing internships leaves the headline rate unchanged.

The pattern also extends across job functions. Account executive postings had a 71.9% removal rate within 60 days. Recruiting reached 70.7%, customer support 67.0%, backend engineering 59.8%, and fullstack engineering 49.7%. Hardware engineering sat at the other end at 25.7%, showing that specialized searches for entry level jobs can remain open much longer.

The broad seniority comparison is not one seasonal internship program masquerading as a market result.

## A closed listing is not a filled job

The central limitation is also the most important interpretive rule: ATS removal is not a hiring outcome.

Some removed jobs produced hires. Others were withdrawn after budgets changed, closed after an employer collected enough applicants, replaced by a new requisition, or canceled without an offer. Public ATS data does not distinguish those outcomes.

Indeed's research on time to hire uses a different endpoint. It measures the number of days from job creation to a reported first hire. Hotfix measures availability, not completion.

That distinction prevents two unsupported conclusions. The 59.9% removal rate does not mean 59.9% of entry level jobs were filled within 60 days. It also does not mean employers hire entry level candidates faster than senior candidates.

It means applicants lose access to the posting faster.

This matters in a market where candidates early in their careers are searching harder for fewer openings. Indeed reported in April 2026 that junior postings fell 7% during 2025 while senior postings rose 4%. Applications per posting on Handshake rose 26% to 30% year over year as postings fell 15% to 16%.

The practical response is timing, not panic. A fresh posting deserves attention while it is fresh. A listing that has been open for a month is not necessarily dead, but it has already crossed the point at which nearly one third of entry level postings in this analysis had disappeared.

Job age is one signal among many. Reposting history adds another, because a fresh date can mask an older search. Hotfix's analysis of [what it means when a job is reposted](https://hotfix.jobs/blog/what-it-means-when-a-job-is-reposted) separates genuinely new openings from recurring requisitions.

Entry level jobs do not stay public for long. Half were gone by day 48.5, and six in ten were gone by day 60. For candidates at the start of the ladder, the application window closes before the hiring process does.

## Sources

- [SHRM: 2026 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking](https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research/recruiting-benchmarking)
- [Indeed Hiring Lab: For New Grads Looking for Work, the Struggle Is Real (April 2026)](https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/04/23/new-grads-looking-for-work-the-struggle-is-real/)
- [Indeed Hiring Lab: February 2026 US Labor Market Update](https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/02/19/february-2026-labor-market-update-new-year-same-resolutions/)