Employee Tenure Trend Lines, 1983-2010

This paper updates previous Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) publications that have examined employee tenure data of American workers. The latest data on employee tenure from the January 2010 Supplement to the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) are examined and compared with the trends from previous CPS publications on employee tenure. Although data on tenure do not measure workers' security (generally defined as the workers' perception of being able to continue in their current job), they do show stability (the actual length of time workers have been with their current employer). Consequently, tenure data show the results, not the perception, of the ability to stay in a current job. The median (mid-point) tenure for all wage and salary workers age 25 or older was slightly higher in 2010, at 5.2 years, compared with 5.0 years in 1983. However, the median tenure for male wage and salary workers declined from 5.9 years in 1983 to 5.3 years in 2010. In contrast, the median tenure for female wage and salary workers increased from 4.2 years in 1983 to 5.1 years in 2010. Consequently, the increase in the median tenure of female workers more than offsets the decline for male workers, leaving the overall level slightly higher. The gap between private- and public-sector workers' tenure is quite striking, with far longer tenure found in public-sector jobs. However, the percentage of long-term public-sector workers dropped in 2006 and in 2010, while the percentage of long-term private-sector workers are growing. The tenure results presented in this report indicate that, historically, most workers have repeatedly changed jobs during their working careers, and all evidence suggests that they will continue to do so in the future. This has major implications for pensions (which do not reward short-tenure workers), lump-sum distributions from 401(k) plans (which can put workers' retirement savings at risk), and public policy: Public-sector employers are facing the retirement of a significant number of their most experienced workers at a time when social programs are about to face tremendous increases in enrollment.The PDF for the above title, published in the December 2010 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the full text of another December 2010 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: “Who Might Respond to Financial Incentives That Use Lower Cost Sharing to Change Behavior? Findings from the 2010 Health Confidence Survey.”