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Raw data: Job tenure in America

We are not staying at our jobs as long as we used to:

The average for all workers in 2024 was 3.9 years. I chose to chart a single age group since older workers have held their jobs longer and therefore changes in age composition over the years can affect the numbers even if there's been no underlying change.

13 thoughts on “Raw data: Job tenure in America

    1. Citizen99

      I'm 75 and I've had 3 full-time jobs in my lifetime. I stayed at the first one for a year and a half. I stayed at the second one for a year and a half. I stayed at the third one for 41 years. Guess I'm an "outlier."

  1. dilbert dogbert

    I did a number of job hopping in the late 60's to 71. Got tired of the jumping and stuck till retirement in the last one. I would have stayed with the next to the last one but it laid off 1/2 of the staff when Nixon canceled the last of the Apollo program.

  2. WryCooder

    Not like employers want their staff to stick around for 30 years. It's pretty definitively documented that staying with the same employer actually HARMS lifetime earnings. During the 2022 hot labor market, a ton of job hopping was folks who had been star performers at their firms learning they were earrning less than new hires off the street. Loyalty is a two-way street.

  3. paulgottlieb

    The fact that individual health insurance was almost completely unavailable or unaffordable kept many people chained to their jobs, with employer-provided insurance

    1. FrankM

      Very good point. Note that most of the changes in job tenure mirror the overall economy: large drops in the 90's followed by a rapid increase during the 2008-9 recession. By 2012 the level was back at the 1984 level. (Surprise! People change jobs more frequently when jobs are plentiful.)

      Big decreases starting in 2014 when the ACA kicked in.

  4. KJK

    While switching jobs often resulted in a significant increase in earnings, having a pension would tend to anchor employees until they were fully vested, and even longer if the pension benefits continued to accrue, which would of course end if you left your current employer. While I don't have the data, I believe that except for government employees (federal, state, municipal) pensions for most other jobs are long gone. Most people only have their 401k and perhaps company contributions/matching. My last employer (large Fortune 500 company), ended pensions for new employees over a decade ago.

      1. KJK

        "penny-wise, pound-foolish"

        Employers who dropped their pension benefits, or employees who stayed longer to obtain their pensions?

  5. Bluto_Blutarski

    Is this current job or current employer?

    If I kept one of my employees in the same job for more than three years I'd be amazed if they didn't leave,

  6. jte21

    Not surprised. Tech/finance/service sector employment -- which dominates the US economy now -- tends to churn more than a traditional manufacturing economy.

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