Open roles. Recruiters who say they cannot fill them. Job seekers who cannot get past the first automated screen. A new survey from Express Employment Professionals and the Harris Poll, covering more than 1,000 US hiring managers and 1,000 job-seeking adults released on August 12, puts hard numbers on a mismatch that has been building for more than a year. The data points to a process failure at the center of the US labor market, not a talent shortage.

The gap between posted and actually hiring

Two figures from the Express Employment Professionals-Harris Poll data sit uncomfortably next to each other. First: 44% of US hiring managers say their organization currently has jobs it cannot fill, the highest level recorded since fall 2023 and up sharply from 36% reported in fall 2025. Second: those same managers report that an average 21% of open roles are closed without a hire, and more than one in four managers put that figure at 27% of all available positions going unfilled entirely.

A fifth of open roles quietly disappearing is not a talent-shortage story. It is a planning and process story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) has consistently shown millions of open positions on paper across the US economy, but the Express Employment data now suggests a material share of those postings are aspirational or pipeline-building rather than funded, active vacancies. Job seekers appear to sense this: 31% surveyed said they believe companies are posting roles while only collecting resumes for review rather than intending to fill them, and more than one in five went further, saying they suspect the open position was quietly handed to artificial intelligence.

Why the labor market feels colder than the headline numbers suggest

On paper, the macro picture looks constructive. Challenger, Gray and Christmas reported that month-to-month US job cuts fell 27% between June and July of this year, year-over-year layoffs were down 46%, and July posted the lowest monthly total of recorded layoffs in two years. Fewer workers are being displaced. More roles are posted as open. Eagle Hill Consulting's Employee Retention Index adds another layer: its most recent reading indicated that employees may be less likely to remain in their current jobs over the next six months, a pattern that historically signals a warming market and increased candidate supply.

And yet the actual hiring experience tells a different story. Candidates in the Harris Poll are averaging four interviews before receiving an offer, down from five in spring 2023 but still a substantial investment of time. More than 43% of hiring managers acknowledge it takes longer to fill open positions today than it did two years ago, and 26% report that a single role now requires at least four weeks from resume review to final decision. The labor market is technically warm. The experience of trying to enter it, for millions of US workers, is not.

Hiring has become more complex, and employers are working to balance speed, quality and the right fit. Technology can help streamline the process, but it delivers the greatest value when paired with thoughtful, human interaction.

Bob Funk Jr., CEO of Express Employment International, said in the statement accompanying the survey release. His observation cuts in both directions: technology that filters too aggressively loses qualified candidates; technology deployed without human review generates the automated-screen frustration that 31% of candidates now cite as the hardest part of the job search.

For employees and candidates: reading the signals before you invest your time

If roughly one in five roles you apply to will close without a hire, your application strategy benefits from a tighter filter before you invest time tailoring a resume. A few indicators worth checking upfront:

• Posting age and repost frequency. A role listed continuously for 60 or more days across multiple job boards, with no update to the description, is more likely a pipeline-building post than an active funded vacancy. Cross-reference the listing date against any version you can find in employer review platforms.
• A named point of contact. Postings that include a named recruiter or hiring manager tend to close faster than anonymous listings routed exclusively through an applicant tracking system. The presence of a name also gives you a direct channel to confirm status after two weeks of silence.
• Candidate reviews on process transparency. Employer reviews from recent applicants often flag companies that conduct multiple interview rounds and then go silent. That pattern is data, not anecdote, and it is available before you submit.
• Interview scope creep. If a role advertised as mid-level begins drawing you into a fifth or sixth round with a new panel, ask directly about the timeline and whether headcount has been formally approved. By round four, that question is entirely reasonable.

One structural shift worth making now: assume the first screen is automated. Format your resume and cover letter for machine parsing, using clean headings, standard job titles, and keywords drawn directly from the posting. Save the narrative for the human conversations that follow. That is not gaming the system; it is adapting to how the front of the funnel actually works in 2026.

Candidates earlier in a search also benefit from looking at sector-level hiring patterns before committing to a role category. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) regularly publishes benchmark data on time-to-fill and offer acceptance rates by industry, and comparing that alongside salary benchmarks and verified employer reputation data gives you a materially better read than any single posting can.

For HR and hiring managers: the business cost of roles that never close

A 21% unfilled-role rate is not primarily a recruiting problem. It is a business planning problem that surfaces inside the recruiting funnel. Every posting that closes without a hire carries at least four distinct costs: sourcing spend already committed, interview time invested by both candidates and internal staff, the reputational signal visible in candidate reviews on third-party platforms, and the operational gap the role was supposed to address.

With 44% of organizations reporting open jobs they cannot fill, the diagnostic question is rarely about talent availability alone. It tends to be one of three structural issues:

• Is the requisition funded? Some postings remain live on a careers site because a manager expects budget to free up, not because headcount is approved. The Harris Poll data shows that 31% of candidates already suspect they are applying to roles in this category. That candidate skepticism translates directly into lower application quality and reduced offer acceptance rates when a role does move forward.
• Is the process timeline defensible? Four interviews on average is manageable. Six rounds with multi-week gaps between them is where offers get declined and employer reviews turn negative. If your time-to-fill has stretched past four weeks, mapping where the days are actually going is the first diagnostic step, not a recruiting intervention.
• Is automation filtering out the right candidates? Bob Funk Jr.'s framing deserves serious attention: technology delivers value when paired with human judgment, not when it substitutes for it. When 31% of candidates identify the automated experience as the hardest part of the process, and more than one in five believe an AI model received the job they applied for, the funnel is losing candidates it did not need to lose. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has also flagged that automated screening tools can generate disparate impact on protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, adding a compliance dimension to the design of AI-assisted hiring systems that HR teams cannot ignore.

When the process is clear and timely, employers can keep business moving, and candidates can better understand whether an opportunity is the right fit.

The retention context adds urgency to the process question. Eagle Hill Consulting's Employee Retention Index indicated that workforce mobility may tick upward over the next six months. The organizations that have cleaned up their hiring processes before that mobility wave arrives will be positioned to capture candidates that others lose to interview fatigue. SHRM benchmark data on offer acceptance rates consistently shows that process speed and communication clarity are among the top three variables candidates cite when deciding between competing offers.

What the data means for both sides this quarter

For candidates: apply to fewer roles, research each employer more thoroughly using verified review data, and treat the interview process itself as diagnostic information about how the organization operates day-to-day. A company that cannot run a structured, communicative four-round process is revealing something material about its internal coordination and management culture.

For HR teams: audit every posting currently live on your careers site against actual approved headcount. Ghost postings drain candidate trust, and that trust is now quantified in survey data. The BLS JOLTS numbers may show millions of openings nationally, but the Express Employment Professionals-Harris Poll data makes clear that a significant share of those openings are not moving to hire. The US labor market has not run short of people willing to work. Based on the current data, it has run short of hiring processes that candidates and organizations can both trust.