WP Job Manager plugin - Listing only the twelve job categories on frontpage order by jobs they have

Edited:

This is a much simpler version of what you are looking to do. You don’t need WP_Query(). You can use a foreach loop and an iterator:

<?php
echo '<ul class="job-category-list">';

// Get the terms and order them by count in descending order.
$terms = get_terms( [
        'taxonomy' => 'job_listing_category',
        'orderby'  => 'count',
        'order'    => 'DESC',
    ]
);

// Set an iterator
$i = 1;
// foreach term
foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
    // if the iterator is less than or equal to 12.
    if ( $i <= 12 ) :
        echo '<li><a href="' . get_term_link( $term->term_id ) . '" title="' . esc_attr( $term->name ) . '">' . $term->name . '</a>&nbsp;(' . ( $term->count ) . ')</li>';
        // Increase the iterator.
        $i++;
    endif;
}

echo '<ul><!-- /job-category-list -->';
?>

For the count, not sure why are you seeing a difference. But this essentially gives you what you want.

EDIT: from this wpse post: List taxonomy / category count showing list published posts only

You can use this filter to get the correct count for only published posts:

function get_terms_filter_published( $terms, $taxonomies, $args ) {
  global $wpdb;
  $taxonomy = $taxonomies[0];
  if ( ! is_array($terms) && count($terms) < 1 ) {
    return $terms;
  }

  $filtered_terms = array();
  $ctr = 0;
  foreach ( $terms as $term ) {
    $result = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->posts p JOIN $wpdb->term_relationships rl ON p.ID = rl.object_id WHERE rl.term_taxonomy_id = $term->term_id AND p.post_status="publish" LIMIT 1");
    $published_terms[ $ctr ] = $term;
    if ( intval($result) > 0 ) {
        $published_terms[ $ctr ] = $term;
    } else {
        // you can comment this out if you don't want to show empty terms
        $published_terms[ $ctr ]->count = 0;
    }
    $ctr++;
  }
  return $published_terms;
}

add_filter('get_terms', 'get_terms_filter_published', 10, 3);

So, add that filter function to your functions.php and use the code above to get what you want – only the first 12 categories based on post count.

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