Vacancy duration describes the time between a position becoming available and its being filled. Employers may measure it from job approval, public posting, recruiter intake or another milestone, so two reported durations may not use identical starting points.
Recruitment can take longer when a role requires specialized skills, pay is uncompetitive or the employer restricts where candidates can work. An office-attendance mandate could influence the applicant pool, but duration can also change because of hiring freezes, interviews, budgets or local labor conditions.
Analysts should distinguish open positions that remain unfilled from completed hires. Calculating the average only for roles that were successfully filled can understate how long difficult vacancies last, while a few unusual roles can raise the mean sharply.
When comparing organizations, confirm whether the metric is time-to-fill or time-to-hire, whether the same role types are included and whether ongoing vacancies are accounted for. A longer vacancy is a signal worth investigating, not a standalone measure of a policy's effect.