What 65,052 job postings ask for

Pay: the law decides whether you see a number

Across all countries, 42.4% of postings state a pay figure. In the United States it is 75%, and the gap inside the US is the clearest result in this study: where a state law requires a pay range in the posting, 80.5% of postings have one. Elsewhere, 48.4% do.

Outside North America, a pay figure is the exception: 18.7% of UK postings carry one.

Where a US posting gives a range in dollars, the top of the range is typically 29% above the bottom. The midpoints below are high because of who these employers are; compare the groups with each other, not with national pay data.

AI: most postings mention it, one in ten asks you for it

67.8% of postings mention AI somewhere, often in the paragraph about the company. Far fewer ask anything of the candidate: 10.1% ask for experience with AI tools, fluency with them, or daily use. That count is deliberately strict, so the real share is at least that.

The request is not confined to engineering: design, product and marketing postings ask for it more often than software postings do. Separately, 5.4% of postings carry a note that the employer may use AI in its own hiring process.

Experience: five years is the usual number

52.9% of postings put a number on experience. Where they do, the median is 5 years.

Of postings with a junior or associate title, 13% ask for three or more years, and 5.3% ask for five or more.

Degrees: a third of postings mention one

33% of postings mention a degree. Of those, 37.2% say equivalent experience will do. US postings mention a degree about twice as often as UK ones (38.8% against 20.6%).

Remote and hybrid

30.3% of postings are listed as remote, and a further 20.6% describe a hybrid arrangement.

Cover letters: rarely mentioned, except in a few places

Only 1.3% of postings mention a cover letter. The application form may still have a field for one; this counts the posting text. Two groups stand out: postings in Australia and New Zealand (12%) and postings for interns and graduates (5.3%).

The words postings use

These are the share of postings in which each term appears, which is what a keyword match counts.

The postings themselves

The median posting is 832 words long and has been open for 47 days. 16.2% have been open for more than 90 days, and 8.2% for more than 180.

What this means for your resume

Postings differ more than a single resume can cover: the tools named for a sales role and a finance role barely overlap, and one posting in ten now asks about AI tools. The practical step is to read each posting for its own terms and make sure your resume answers them. You can check a resume against a posting for free, or see how a tailored resume is written for one.

How we counted

• Source. Public postings read from employers' own job boards on Greenhouse (35,057), Ashby (20,589), Lever (7,492) and Recruitee (1,914), all open on 2026-11-12. At most 500 postings are read per employer.
• One posting per role. 84,711 postings became 70,325 after counting the same title at the same employer once, and 65,052 after keeping those written in English.
• Measures. Each figure is a count of postings whose text matches a written pattern, such as a currency amount or "5+ years of experience". Role groups and seniority come from words in the job title; country and state come from the location line. Groups under 300 postings are not shown.
• Pay-range states. CA, CO, DC, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NJ, NY, VT, WA. State figures use postings that name a single state.
• Limits. This is one day, not a trend. The employers are those using these four hiring systems, which over-represents technology companies and under-represents retail, healthcare and the public sector. Pattern matching misses unusual phrasing, so shares are closer to minimums than maximums.

You are welcome to quote these figures with a link to this page. Questions about the method: contact us.