No study has measured what share of jobs, or of executive jobs, are never advertised. The 70 to 85 percent figures that the career industry repeats trace back to a career coach's remark on the radio and a self-selected online poll, and I have used them myself.
That does not make the hidden job market a myth. It makes it badly described. There is good research on how people actually get hired, and it supports a narrower, more useful claim than the one on the conference slides. This is what the sources say when you open them.
Where the 70 to 85 percent figures came from
The 70 to 80 percent figure. The trail leads to a 2011 NPR story on networking, in which a career coach is quoted: "At least 70 percent, if not 80 percent, of jobs are not published." The piece cites no study, no sample and no source for the number. It is one practitioner's estimate, and it has been repeated ever since as "according to NPR". NPR, 2011.
The 85 percent figure. This comes from a 2016 article by the recruiting trainer Lou Adler, published on LinkedIn. He asked about 3,000 people how they had found their most recent job. The respondents chose themselves, the method was not published, and the question was about how people found a job, not about whether the job had been advertised. It is often described as a LinkedIn study. It was a personal poll hosted on LinkedIn. Adler, 2016.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure is frequently credited to the BLS. The nearest thing I can find is a 2011 careers article in its Occupational Outlook Quarterly, which says only that career experts believe many openings are filled this way. It gives no percentage. BLS, 2011.
The academic root. The serious ancestor of all of this is Mark Granovetter's research in the early 1970s on 282 professional, technical and managerial men in one Boston suburb. It is usually summarised as showing that a little over half found their jobs through personal contacts. It is a study of how people found work half a century ago. It did not measure whether those jobs were advertised. Granovetter, 1973.
A different 70 percent. LinkedIn's 2015 Talent Trends report found that 70 percent of the workforce was "passive talent", meaning not actively looking. That is a statement about workers. It is often quoted as if it were a statement about jobs. LinkedIn, 2015.
What nobody has measured
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco put it plainly in 2015: there is no obvious data source on the recruiting activities of US firms. FRBSF Economic Letter, 2015.
The official US count of job openings cannot settle the question either. The BLS definition of an opening requires active recruiting from outside the establishment, and it counts word of mouth as recruiting alongside advertising. The figures cannot be split into advertised and unadvertised.
Where posting has been measured directly, the answer runs against the folklore. Statistics Canada asks employers how they recruit for each vacancy. Indeed's Hiring Lab, working from that survey, reports that online job boards were used for 79 percent of Canadian job vacancies in 2024. Indeed Hiring Lab, 2025. That covers all levels of job in one country. For the labour market as a whole, "most jobs are never advertised" is not what the data show.
What the research does show
| Finding | Source | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| 77.6% of people who moved to a new employer had not been actively looking in the previous three months | San Francisco Fed, 2015, survey data to 2005 | Whether the worker was searching |
| Employed people who say they are not looking receive about a third of all job offers and 57% of unsolicited ones | Faberman, Mueller, Sahin and Topa, 2017, New York Fed survey 2013 to 2017 | Who gets approached |
| Referred candidates were 6% of applicants and 29% of hires at one US company | Brown, Setren and Topa, New York Fed, 2006 to 2010 | Referral advantage, for jobs that were posted |
| 41.6% of hires happen at establishments that reported no vacancy a month earlier, and the authors attribute about two-thirds of that to vacancies opened and filled within the month | Davis, Faberman and Haltiwanger, 2013 | Hiring without a recorded vacancy |
| 80% of US job seekers used a personal or professional connection, and 79% used online resources | Pew Research Center, 2015 | How people look |
Read together, these say three things.
- Jobs find people about as often as people find jobs. Most people who change employer were not looking, and those who are not looking still receive a large share of the offers.
- Being referred is worth far more than applying. At the one company studied in detail, a referred candidate was several times more likely to be hired than an applicant from a job board.
- Referred does not mean unadvertised. Every job in that referral study had been posted. The advantage was inside the advertised market, not outside it.
That is a different claim from "the jobs are hidden". The jobs are mostly visible. The route to them that works is mostly not the application.
What is different at senior level
Nobody has counted unadvertised executive roles either. What is documented points in one direction.
Succession. Spencer Stuart's count of 2024 chief executive appointments found that 72 percent of new S&P 500 CEOs were insiders. Spencer Stuart, 2025. A role filled by succession was never open to an outside applicant.
Retained search. Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori, citing an industry survey, report that large US employers used executive search firms to fill 54 percent of jobs paying above $150,000 between 2001 and 2003. Cappelli and Hamori, 2013. The figure is old and the original survey is no longer available, so treat it as an indication.
Opinion surveys. ExecuNet, a membership network for executives, surveyed search consultants and human resources leaders between 2008 and 2010. As reported in the trade press, their estimates of the share of $200,000-plus positions that were publicly posted ranged from about one in ten to three in ten, depending on the year and the question. Onrec, 2010; Management-Issues, 2010. These are estimates from people in the business, gathered by an organisation with an interest in the answer. Nobody counted postings.
To that I can add experience, labelled as experience. When I ran searches, the long list was built by research and by telephone, not by advertisement, and the client usually preferred it that way. That is what the four channels describe.
The most I am prepared to say is this. No study has counted unadvertised executive jobs. What is documented is that senior roles are filled largely by internal succession and retained search, and that most people who change employer were approached and did not apply.
What this means for a senior search
Do not ignore postings. They tell you a budget is approved and a problem is live. The mistake is treating them as the whole market.
Put the effort where hiring actually happens. That means being findable by the people who build long lists, which is the subject of how to get found by executive recruiters. It means referrals, and direct approaches to decision-makers before a process exists.
Be suspicious of a percentage. Anyone selling access to a hidden market with a number attached is quoting a number that does not exist, and that includes people in my own field. There is no secret list of jobs. There is research, access and follow-through, which is the work a managed search does. The handbook's page on whether it is worth it makes the same point from the buyer's side.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of jobs are never advertised?
Nobody knows, because no dataset measures it. The 70 to 80 percent figure traces to an unsourced remark quoted by NPR in 2011. Where recruiting methods are measured directly, in Canada, online job boards were used for 79 percent of vacancies in 2024, according to Indeed's Hiring Lab working from Statistics Canada's survey.
Is the hidden job market real?
Partly. Most jobs are advertised somewhere, so "hidden" is the wrong word. What the research supports is that most people who change employer were not actively looking, that referred candidates are hired at several times the rate of applicants, and that senior roles are filled largely by succession and retained search.
Where does the 85 percent networking statistic come from?
From a 2016 article by the recruiting trainer Lou Adler, based on about 3,000 self-selected responses to a poll asking how people found their most recent job. The method was not published. It measures how people found jobs, not whether those jobs had been advertised, and it was not a LinkedIn corporate study.
What percentage of executive jobs are posted publicly?
It has not been measured. Opinion surveys of search consultants by ExecuNet between 2008 and 2010 produced estimates from about one in ten to three in ten for roles paying over $200,000. Better documented are the mechanisms: 72 percent of new S&P 500 chief executives in 2024 were insiders, according to Spencer Stuart.
