Kristie M. Engemann

Michael T. Owyang

English

Research Papers in Economics

February 2004
NationalEconomicTrends
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System.
Your Current Job
Probably Won’t Be
Your Last
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 remain-
ing 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 remain-
ing 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 of a worker with a service job
by at least two years, this shift has played a role in average
tenure’s decline. Technological progress in the past few
decades has also led to a number of changes in the work-
place. Using data from 1983 to 2000 and measures of total
factor productivity (TFP), Friedberg and Owyang (2002)
find that higher TFP growth was correlated with a decline
in job tenure. New technologies bring about job turnover
by replacing unskilled jobs while making skilled jobs
more complex. 
With today’s labor market, people believe that they will
switch jobs more often than their counterparts years ago
did, as demonstrated by falling average and expected
remaining tenure. Continuing technological advances and
the concomitant demand for new skills will maintain these
trends.
—Kristie M. Engemann and Michael T. Owyang 
1 Friedberg, Leora and Owyang, Michael. “Explaining the Evolution of Pension
Structure and Job Tenure.” Working Paper 2002-022b, Federal Reserve Bank
of St. Louis, October 2002.
2 The men experienced a concurrent drop in average tenure from 9.7 to 8.8
years during this time period, while women’s average job tenure declined from
7.4 to 7.3 years from 1983 to 1998.
3 Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employee Tenure in 2002.” Release, September 19,
2002.
Available on the web at research.stlouisfed.org
Average Expected Remaining Tenure
0
5
10
15
20
25
0-5 6-15 16-25 26-35
Years of Current Tenure
1983 Men 1998 Men 1983 Women 1998 Women
Years of Expected Remaining Tenure

Your current job probably won't be your last

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Your current job probably won't be your last

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Research Papers in Economics