Employee Tenure Averages Four Years

How long do workers stay in a given job? Nationally, the average employee tenure in January 2020 was 4.1 years. Data to address this question isn’t available for Oregon, but every two years the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes this information for the nation.

Data back to 2006 show little variation – job tenure has been fairly consistent over the last decade plus. A slight peak was reached in the January 2012 results, which is probably the effect of workers staying longer in the jobs they held – if they managed to hang on to them – when the nation entered the Great Recession, which lasted from late 2007 to the middle of 2009.

Public-sector workers tend to stay in their jobs longer than the average in the much larger private-sector workforce. The January 2020 median tenure for public-sector workers was 6.5 years, compared with 3.7 years among workers in the private sector.

Other facts about employee tenure as of January 2020:

• Workers age 55 and older have the longest tenure out of any age group at around 10 years.
• Median tenure was similar for men and women at 4.3 and 3.9 years, respectively.
• Tenure was similar across education levels, with median tenure ranging from 4.6 years for those with less than a high school diploma to 5.5 years for those with a doctoral or professional degree.

To learn more, read economist Jessica Nelson's full article here.