Given the tumultuous changes in the US economy in recent years, I would have guessed that average “job tenure”–that is, the average time that someone with a job has held that job–was declining. My guess would have been wrong. Henry R. Hyatt and James R. Spletzer present the evidence that job tenure has been mostly on the increase since about 2000 in “Henry R. Hyatt and James R. Spletzer(U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies, May 2016, CES 16-12R). For example, they write:
“According to published statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the proportion of workers with five or more years of tenure on their main job has increased from 44% to 51% from 1998 to 2014, and the proportion of workers with one year or less of tenure on their main job has decreased from 28% to 21%. We document a similar shift in the job tenure distribution for the years 1998 to 2013 using LEHD [Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics] microdata, which is nearly identical to the CPS tenure distribution once differences between these source data are accounted for.”
Here are a couple of illustrative figures. The top panel shows median job tenure in the Current Population Survey data, going back to 1951. The bottom panel shows the share of jobs that fall into certain job tenure categories: for example, the top line shows the share of employed people who have held a job for at least five years.
Here’s a figure based on the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data, which is a database in which state governments send administrative records about who works where to the US Census Bureau, which combines them in a way that preserves anonymity for workers and employers. The database covers 95% of private sector jobs. Again, you can see the rise in the share of jobs held for more than five years.
