The Staff Selection Commission (SSC) has done the thing candidates have been asking for since May. On 24 September it published the post-wise, category-wise vacancy list for the Combined Graduate Level Examination 2026 — the document that turns a vague headline number into an actual list of jobs.
The total on it is 10,731.
The advertisement SSC issued on 21 May said something different. Paragraph 3.1 of it reads: “Tentative vacancies: There are approx.12,256 vacancies. The vacancies are being collected by the Commission.” That is 1,525 posts more than the list that has now appeared — a drop of about one in eight.
It arrived six days before Tier 1 begins.
What the document actually is
It is a single table, 59 rows long, headed “Tentative Vacancies for Combined Graduate Level Examination, 2026 (as on 24.09.2026)”. Each row is one post in one department: the ministry, the department, the post name, the pay level, whether it is Group B or Group C, and then the numbers — unreserved, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward Classes, Economically Weaker Sections, and the horizontal reservations for ex-servicemen and for persons with disabilities.
At the bottom, a red line: final vacancies may vary from the tentative vacancies.
That warning is not decoration. It is the reason the number moved in the first place, and the reason it can move again.
Where the 10,731 posts actually sit
Most coverage will stop at the total. The useful number is the level, because the level is the salary. Here is the whole list collapsed into five rows.
| Pay level | Monthly pay range (7th CPC) | Posts | Share of the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level 8 | ₹47,600 – ₹1,51,100 | 1,521 | 14.2% |
| Level 7 | ₹44,900 – ₹1,42,400 | 4,149 | 38.7% |
| Level 6 | ₹35,400 – ₹1,12,400 | 1,005 | 9.4% |
| Level 5 | ₹29,200 – ₹92,300 | 1,547 | 14.4% |
| Level 4 | ₹25,500 – ₹81,100 | 2,509 | 23.4% |
| Total | 10,731 |
The pay ranges are SSC’s own, printed in paragraphs 2.1 to 2.5 of the advertisement. The post counts are ours, added up row by row from the 24 September list — and they come to exactly the 10,731 the Commission prints at the foot of its own table.
Two in five of these jobs are Level 7
Level 7 alone holds 4,149 posts. That is where the Assistant Section Officer jobs are — the Central Secretariat Service, the Intelligence Bureau, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Railway Board, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation — and where the Inspector posts in the two tax boards sit.
A Level 7 post starts at a basic pay of ₹44,900. At the Dearness Allowance rate of 60% now in force, that is ₹26,940 of DA on top, so ₹71,840 a month before House Rent Allowance and Transport Allowance are added and before anything is deducted. Level 4, the entry band with 2,509 posts, starts at ₹25,500 basic, which works out to ₹40,800 with DA. You can put your own city and level into the pay matrix and see the rest.
One line is a fifth of the whole exam
The single biggest entry on the list is Inspector (Central Excise) in the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs: 2,366 posts. No other row comes close. It is more than a fifth of the entire examination sitting in one post in one board.
After it, the list thins out fast. Tax Assistant in the Central Board of Direct Taxes has 1,400. Auditor under the Controller General of Defence Accounts has 875. Tax Assistant in CBIC has 841. Assistant Section Officer in the Central Secretariat Service and the Department of Personnel and Training has 668. Inspector of Income Tax has 595.
At the other end, the rows that candidates chase hardest are tiny. Sub Inspector in the Central Bureau of Investigation: 7 posts. Assistant Section Officer in the Election Commission: 2. In the Central Vigilance Commission: 2. In the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology: 3.
The three Assistant Audit Officer and Assistant Accounts Officer lines under the Comptroller and Auditor General — the only Level 8 posts, and the only gazetted ones — come to 1,521 between them.
It was not the Commission that took the posts away
This is worth saying plainly, because the anger will land in the wrong place.
SSC’s own advertisement, at paragraph 3.5, states: “The Commission does not have any role in deciding the number of vacancies of any Indenting Department/ Organization.” The departments report what they need. SSC conducts the exam and publishes what it is told.
So the 1,525 that are missing were not cut by SSC. They are the difference between what the ministries had indicated in May, when the count was being collected, and what they have confirmed in September. Some departments revise down. Some have not reported at all yet — which is precisely why the red line about final vacancies is there.
One more detail from the same advertisement that candidates regularly get wrong: the 373 ex-servicemen vacancies are reserved for Group C posts only, under paragraph 3.3. They do not apply to the Group B posts at Levels 6 to 8.
What to do with this in the next five days
Very little, honestly — and that is the point of saying it.
The vacancy count does not change what is on your paper on 30 September. It changes the cut-off, months from now, and it changes it for everyone equally. What it should change is your post preference form, which you fill much later: a post with 2,366 vacancies and a post with 7 are not the same bet, and the list you now have is the first honest look at which is which.
Keep the list. When the preference window opens, read it again against the level, the department and the city you would actually be posted to — not against the name of the post.
And treat the number as a moving one. It moved by 1,525 between May and September. There is nothing in the document that says it has stopped.