Your current job probably won't be your last

Abstract

NationalEconomicTrends Views expressed do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System. P revious generations of workers held lifelong jobs. Today's workers no longer expect to work for the same employer for their entire career. Even in the past 20 years, expected job tenure has declined in the United States, with a few differences between the trends for men and women. Some notable trends in job tenure, and their potential causes, may provide some insight into the employment landscape of the future. Friedberg and Owyang (2002) use data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to find job tenure trends. 1 According to the SCF, from 1983 to 1998, average expected remaining tenure—how long a worker expects to continue working for his current employer—for full-time male employees declined from 18.6 to 14.7 years. The trend for female workers is similar. Their expected remaining tenure starts at 15.9 in 1983 and eventually falls to 12.8 years in 1998. 2 The accompanying graph shows these numbers broken down by years of experience at workers' current jobs. Note that for nearly every subsample, expected remaining tenure has decreased. An interesting trend arises with the percentage of employees aged 25 and older who have been with their current employer for at least ten years. The total percentage of men in this group decreased by nearly 5 points from 1983 to 2002, whereas the opposite holds for women— their percentage increased by almost 4 points. All age groups for men saw declines, but those affected most negatively were men aged 40-44, 45-49, and, especially, 60-64. In contrast, the percentage of women aged 35-54 with ten-year tenure or longer increased, but the remaining age groups suffered the same fate as the men's age groups. 3 What could have brought about these trends? Changing labor market characteristics in the past couple of decades have had pronounced effects on tenure. For instance, countering the general decreasing tenure trend, women's rising labor force participation beginning in the 1980s undoubtedly contributed to the proportion of 35-to 54-year-olds with ten years of tenure. In the graph, these same women demonstrate their growing attachment to the workforce through their increased expected remaining tenure. Numerous factors have contributed to the decline in job tenure. The composition of payroll employment has shifted to more heavily favor service jobs at manufactur-ing's expense. Because the median tenure for a worker in manufacturing exceeds that …