How We Count Job Postings and How Accurate It Is
What our career and research figures count, how postings are grouped into careers, what we checked and what we do not publish.
Every figure on our career and research pages comes from job postings that employers published on their own applicant tracking systems. This page explains what we count, how we group postings into careers, what we checked, and what we do not publish.
The data
The October 2026 edition counts open, de-duplicated job postings collected from employer career sites. Statistics use US postings only, and only postings whose job title was read in our audit. Postings of applicant tracking systems' demo and test accounts are left out.
Grouping into careers
Careers are built from the job titles employers use, not from a fixed list. Every group and the titles shown for it were read by reviewers, using each title's meaning and the skills in its own postings; a second reviewer tried to refute every change. The audit moved 4,608 misplaced titles and removed 388 that name no job. Where one title means different jobs at different employers (a "customer service associate" at a discount store works the register and stocks shelves), an employer's postings of that title are placed by what the postings describe.
How accurate the career grouping is
Before any figure of a career is published, we read 20 to 40 of its own postings in full. A career's figures are published when at most 10% of them belong to another career. A career that failed and whose data was then corrected is checked again on 80 new postings, because 40 postings decide a career close to 10% mostly by chance:237 of the 289 careers checked passed. 214 of them have a career page (careers with at least 1,000 postings from at least 50 employers); for the smaller ones the figures appear only on their resume-example page. Careers that failed show no posting figures anywhere, and the research reports count only careers with a career page. Each career page states its own result.
Across the careers that passed (5,691 postings read, each career weighted by its number of postings), 85.5% (95% interval 84–87%) of postings are in the right career and 95.6% (95% interval 94–97%) in the right or a closely related one.
For comparison, a random sample of 988 postings across all careers, read before the title review below and before failing careers were left out, found 81.9% (95% interval 79–84%) in the right career and 91.8% (95% interval 90–93%) in the right or a closely related one.
The postings were read by an AI model following written rules (what counts as the right career, what counts as closely related).
Field accuracy
| Field | Correct | Checked | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Career assignment: right career | 85.5% (95% interval 84–87%) | 5,691 postings | published |
| Career assignment: right or closely related | 95.6% (95% interval 94–97%) | 5,691 postings | published |
| Skills named in the posting | 98.4% (95% interval 98–99%) | 1,527 skills | published |
| State, single-location postings | 100.0% (95% interval 98–100%) | 195 | published |
| Pay period, hourly postings | 98.7% (95% interval 93–100%) | 76 | published |
| Pay period, annual postings | 92.1% (95% interval 84–96%) | 76 | published |
| Pay period, weekly/monthly postings | 50.8% (95% interval 38–63%) | 59 | excluded |
| Pay minimum, annual postings | 86.5% (95% interval 77–92%) | 74 | published |
| Experience minimum, 2–4 years | 86.7% (95% interval 76–93%) | 60 | published |
| Pay stated, found by extraction | 68.4% (95% interval 61–75%) | 155 | not published by state |
| Bachelor's degree, found when stated | 43.7% (95% interval 33–55%) | 71 | not published |
What each number means
| Figure | Definition |
|---|---|
| Median advertised pay | Median of the midpoint of each posting's pay range. US postings, US dollars, hourly or annual pay only (weekly and monthly figures were read correctly only half the time and are excluded). When a posting does not say hourly or annual, $15,000 or more is read as annual and $7.25–$300 as hourly. At most 20 postings per employer count. A single figure is left out as not the job's pay when it states no pay period and is below 40% of the career's typical pay, or is above 2.5 times it: in a check of 210 such postings these were mostly sign-on bonuses, differentials and daily rates. |
| Shown, range, withheld | Shown when at least 250 postings state pay and leaving out the largest employer moves the median by 10% or less; a range when it moves more; withheld below 250. |
| Careers paid by the hour | When more than half of a career's pay postings state an hourly rate, the page leads with pay per hour. |
| Starting pay | Median pay in postings that ask for up to 1 year of experience (required or preferred). |
| Shares (skills, experience, hours) | Each employer counts with at most 20 postings in a career, so one employer's posting template does not decide a career's figures. Skills need at least 300 postings, experience at least 200. |
| Employers | Franchise locations and agency offices of one brand count as one employer: grouped when they share the brand's website and the brand's posting template. |
| What employers ask for | Items from the bullet lists in postings, grouped by meaning, counted once per employer: share = employers whose postings say it / employers in the sample with a list. |
| States | Single-location postings only; a state needs 100 postings that state pay. |
| Government comparison | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics national median annual wage (OEWS) for the career's official occupation, shown only where the occupation is the same job. |
What we do not publish, and why
- Degree requirements per career: our extraction found only 44% (95% interval 33–55%) of stated bachelor's requirements.
- Contract type: too few postings state it to estimate a split.
- Remote share: the employer's location field and the posting text disagree too often.
- Certifications: not yet checked item by item.
- Share of postings that state pay, by state: our extraction finds pay in only 68% (95% interval 61–75%) of postings that state it.
Corrections
- 26 October 2026: a reader found software-testing titles ("Selenium") grouped with the UK special-educational-needs coordinator role (SENCO). A full audit of every career followed and moved 4,608 titles.
- 26 October 2026: the career-accuracy figure was restated from 85% (measured on a sample of job titles) to a figure measured on a sample of postings.
- 28 October 2026: franchise locations of one brand now count as one employer, every share counts at most 20 postings per employer, and postings whose text describes another career than their title were moved.
- 28 October 2026: in careers that failed the check or changed, reviewers read every common title with its largest employers and left out titles that usually mean another job (a "driver" at a senior living home, an "assistant manager" at a fast-food chain).
- 28 October 2026: pay figures that are not the job's pay are left out. Reading 210 postings at the edges of each career's pay showed sign-on bonuses, shift differentials and daily rates taken as the pay (the Registered Nurse 25th percentile in Kansas was $9.62 an hour, a $20,000 sign-on bonus). About 1% of pay figures were removed; most career medians did not move, 22 moved by more than 1% and the largest by 5%.
- 28 October 2026: the salaried pay of Security Officer came from titles of other jobs (defense-industry security-clearance specialists, crossing guards, school hall monitors). A sample of 12 careers that had not had the title review found about 10% of their postings under titles of other jobs (41% in Production Planner, mostly maintenance planners), so every career with a page was reviewed the same way: 2,148 more titles were left out. The 75 careers that changed by 5% or more were checked again and 12 failed. In those 12, reviewers then read up to 250 titles each (472 more left out) and each was checked again on 80 new postings: 10 passed; Data Analyst and Facilities Manager did not and show no posting figures. 4 careers now have too few postings for a career page. Pay tables now name the most common titles of the hourly and the salaried postings, which in many careers are different jobs.
- 28 October 2026: 3,879 postings of an applicant tracking system's demo account (realistic job titles, placeholder text) were left out of every career. The career checks above count only postings still in each career after these changes.
License and citation
Aggregate figures are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to the page. Individual postings and employer names are not part of the licensed data.