The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer
was 4.2 years in January 2018
(in the future, the link may take you to a then-current survey)
Pointer from Alex Tabarrok, indirectly from Tyler Cowen.
The overall figure includes workers under age 25, and that may skew the number downard. If you dig into the BLS release, you find that for workers aged 35-44, the median tenure is around 5 years. That is still not terribly long. This is not the textbook picture of the labor market, in which everybody works in the GDP factory in “the” job at “the” wage rate. I see it as another reason to prefer the framework that I call patterns of sustainable specialization and trade.
the median tenure is around 5 years. That is still not terribly long.
IDK. Think about 35 – 44 have had 10 – 15 years of adult career years here and median is 5 years also means there are lots of ~10 year workers in this bracket. And think about how many of workers do join or drop out of the workforce (5 – 10% of changes to family or moving) with 1 year tenure.
Also, higher tenure does not mean less specialization as well. During the Great Recession a lot of offices cut workers to the bone and eliminated any worker or training ‘Bench’ So by 2012 by many offices faced a lot experienced worker specialization in the office that limited their ability to layoff workers or find outside talent (which is costly). The primary driver of lower unemployment since 2011 is lower unemployment claims (record lows since late 1960s) versus a mass hiring.
Two jobs per recession cycle.
Over my career I had come up with a rule that the optimal time to change jobs is every 5 years. This was about 2008 when I made by next 5-year move and based on my own experiences – basically you reach some kind of top in terms of learning, motivation, and exploring opportunities.
Then the 10,000 hours idea came up.
40hrs/week x 50 weeks/yr x 5yrs = 10,000 hours!
So I was convinced that 5 years was right.
This BLS statistic further confirms it.
I had a similar insight after I had retired in 2011. I looked back over my career and my colleagues as they got fired/laid off in 2008-2011, and the most notable thing about them is that they were all 10+ year employees (in my case 16 years). In other words, at least in salaried positions, there isn’t a last in/first out when it comes to staff reductions- the ax seems to avoid the people hired in the last 10 years, and part of that is probably exactly that “top in terms of learning, motivation, and exploring opportunities.”
If we look at aggregate unemployment rate we can see a mid cycle glitch in all but one of the recessions, since 1975. We also know they are synchronous with presidential regime changes.
So work the problem backwards. How would a bunch of independent workers conspire to have those mid cycle corrections, or pauses between a future and past recession? Because they time it according to the election cycle.
They knew before hand, and adjusted their job situation to get one more squeeze before their planned recession. They know quite a bit of the future because they voted for it, and know quite well when their fraudulent vote will squeeze the Treasury and taxes be arriving.
One of the dudes and Yancy got half the problem.
Workers in the defense industry knew the reagan defense buildup was not sustainable, together they and the companies reached a top. Obamacare folks knew the premiums would be spiking in prices and knew it would hit about 2014. many teachers now when the pensions will be stretched and time their retirement with some flexibility.
There is a bit of fraud in our vote because we are generally a special interest pushing a one sided deal. The budget thus gets stressed at about mid cycle.
IDK…There big difference of Post War2 Recessions and Post Reagan Revolution Recessions are the both the length of the recession and the length of the economic expansion. So there could some differences of the economy and jobs driving these ‘glitches’ more than anything else.
1) Watching the Honeymooners 39 episodes, Ralph gets laid off 5 times and always gets rehired. We forget this labor market reality of the Post WW2 era that laid off meant you hired first. This changed during the 1980s when urban manufacturing laid off meant completely fired. (The manufacturing jobs in semi-rural America this hit more in 1990 S&L.)
2) The big surprise of the S&L 1990 Recession was the slowness of the labor market that did not start around until Summer 1992. In all reality, the labor turned quicker in the Great Recession, lagged economy by 12 months than the Dotcom or S&L Recession. (So we do have a different economy)
3) Look at the longest expansions: Reagan Revolution, DotCom, Post-GR are all 8+ years expansions. That is a long time expansion and there is going to micro-economic glitches in there.
I think this is one of the reasons that the cities are becoming so important. If you change jobs every 5 years, then you need to live in a place where there will be multiple job openings.
Even if you can get a decent job in a small town, will you be able to find another in the same town 5 years later?