We build and analyze a new U.S. database that links 125 million applications to job vacancies and employer-side clients on Dice.com, an online platform for jobs and workers in software design, computer systems, engineering, financial analysis, management consulting, and other occupations that require technical skills. We find, first, that posting durations are quite short, often only two or three days, with a median of seven days. Second, labor market tightness has tiny effects on posting durations. Third, job seekers display a striking propensity to target new postings, with almost half of applications flowing to openings posted in the past 48 hours. Fourth, applications per posting are much too uneven to reflect random search, even within narrow market segments and job categories. Moreover, posted offer wages play no role in explaining the deviations from a random-search benchmark. Fifth, intermediaries play a huge role on both sides of the platform: Recruitment and staffing firms account for two-thirds of all postings and attract most of the applications. We relate these and other findings to theories of labor market search.

More on this topic

BFI Working Paper·Sep 16, 2025

Making the Invisible Hand Visible: Managers and the Allocation of Workers to Jobs

Virginia Minni
Topics: Employment & Wages
BFI Working Paper·Sep 8, 2025

Earnings Instability

Peter Ganong, Pascal Noel, Christina Patterson, Joseph S. Vavra, and Alexander Weinberg
Topics: Economic Mobility & Poverty, Employment & Wages
BFI Working Paper·Sep 2, 2025

The Effects of Parental Income and Family Structure on Intergenerational Mobility: A Trajectories-Based Approach

Yoosoon Chang, Steven Durlauf, Bo Hu, and Joon Park
Topics: Economic Mobility & Poverty, Employment & Wages