PowerShell Background jobs

A background job runs work in a separate process so your prompt comes back immediately. Start-Job -ScriptBlock { } begins one, Get-Job lists them, Receive-Job collects the output, and Wait-Job blocks until they finish.

Lesson 2 min read Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7

Documentation: Microsoft Learn

Written and tested by Dhrub Bharali · Updated 02 October 2026

Overview

The separate process is the whole trade-off. Nothing from your session is visible inside the job: not variables, not functions, not loaded modules. Pass values in with -ArgumentList and read them from $args or a param block. This surprises people whose job fails with an empty variable that was clearly set two lines above.

Receive-Job removes the output from the job by default, so calling it twice gives you nothing the second time. Pass -Keep if you need to read the results more than once.

Jobs also cost real memory and startup time, roughly a fifth of a second and tens of megabytes each, because each one is a process. For a handful of long tasks that is fine. For a hundred short ones it is the wrong tool, and thread jobs are the answer.

Remove-Job cleans up. Finished jobs stay in the list until you do.

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$job = [pscustomobject]@{
  Id = 1
  Name = 'Job1'
  State = 'Completed'
  HasMoreData = $true
  Command = 'Get-Service'
}
$job | Format-Table Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

Stage 1$jobPositional values or no named parameters
Stage 2Format-TablePositional values or no named parameters

An example to inspect

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$job = [pscustomobject]@{
  Id = 1
  Name = 'Job1'
  State = 'Completed'
  HasMoreData = $true
  Command = 'Get-Service'
}
$job | Format-Table Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

What happens

This shows the shape Get-Job returns rather than starting a real job. The State column is what you poll: Running, Completed, Failed or Blocked. HasMoreData tells you whether Receive-Job still has output waiting, which is how you know whether a completed job has already been collected.

Worth remembering

Start-Job runs in a separate process, so your session's state is not visible.
Pass data in with -ArgumentList.
Receive-Job consumes the output unless you pass -Keep.
Each job costs a process. Use thread jobs for many short tasks.

Primary documentation

Get-Service reference

Try it

Illustrative output · values vary by environment

1PS> $job = [pscustomobject]@{

2PS> Id = 1

3PS> Name = 'Job1'

4PS> State = 'Completed'

5PS> HasMoreData = $true

6PS> Command = 'Get-Service'

7PS> }

8PS> $job | Format-Table Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

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$job = [pscustomobject]@{
  Id = 1
  Name = 'Job1'
  State = 'Completed'
  HasMoreData = $true
  Command = 'Get-Service'
}
$job | Format-Table Id, Name, State, HasMoreData

Ready to inspect.

Shows the columns Get-Job returns and what State and HasMoreData mean.

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