What the Fractional Working Index observes about US advertised demand for fractional CTO work, what changed, and what the evidence cannot establish. Rebuilt from the public data endpoint on each deployment.
Advertised demand for this role is in the stable band of the scale. It is tracking within a few points of the average of the six roles this week. This is advertised-demand context, not evidence of willingness to pay, achieved fees, or pricing power.
Advertised demand is effectively flat against the previous seven days (45 to 46). A flat reading is market context, not a recommendation to change or preserve a sales plan.
Pulse tracks SEC Form D filing velocity alongside observed job-posting demand. The filing series provides startup-financing context, but Pulse has not validated a predictive relationship between those filings and future fractional hiring. It is documented on the dashboard.
| Source | Count | Last read | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Jobs via DataForSEO | 10 | 2026-10-29 | first page of results, saturates at ten, so read it as presence rather than volume |
| Adzuna (US job boards) | 10 | 2026-10-24 | US postings matching the exact phrase |
Both sources are averaged across the seven days to 2026-10-29, then averaged together, so a source that reported on five of those days does not outweigh one that reported on two.
| Fractional Working Index (overall) | 47 | Stable |
| Demand pillar, all roles (weight 50%) | 62 | |
| Supply pillar (weight 20%) | 50 | |
| Culture pillar (weight 30%) | 50 | |
| Data completeness for this reading | 100% | weighted tracked-input coverage, not prediction accuracy |
The fractional CTO demand index counts job postings that name the phrase “fractional CTO” explicitly, from Adzuna's US index and Google Jobs via DataForSEO. These discovery sources may overlap and are not described as independent. Each source is averaged across a trailing seven-day window, the sources are then averaged together, and the result is normalised onto the same 0 to 100 scale as the FWI demand pillar.
Bands: 75 and above is Surging, 60 to 75 Growing, 45 to 60 Stable, 30 to 45 Cooling, and below 30 Contracting.
What it does not count: full-time openings for the same title, and fractional work won by referral rather than by a posting. That second gap matters, because a large share of fractional engagements never reach a job board at all. Read this as a directional read on advertised demand, not as a census of the market.
Pulse does not publish a per-role supply or talent-availability score. The supply sources are not role-differentiated once normalised, so splitting them by role would invent a distinction the data does not contain.