Job stability up for women, down for men

19 March 2001 - Despite the current slump and recent boom, job tenure has increased for women and decreased for men in the USA. But overall there is little change according to an article in the March issue of EBRI Notes, published by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

The article argues that underlying economic factors - which seem to have changed in the late 20th century - may have played an important role in the interpretation of job tenure data in the recent past. The article includes an analysis of job tenure data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor and also considers implications for retirement security of workers and their families.

Between 1983 and 2000 the proportion of all wage and salary employees with upto two years of tenure with current employers was in the 36-39% range. Male job tenure fell for all age groups between 1983 to 2000, but seems to have leveled out during the last couple of years. Conversely female job tenure for has been rising for almost all age groups since 1951 - rising the most for women between 45 and 54 years of age.

EBRI President Dallas Salisbury commented that job tenure data do not necessarily provide a good yardstick to gauge employment security - unless the underlying economic factors are also considered. For instance, he said, many analysts may regard increases in employee tenure as a sign of improving job security and decreasing tenure as a sign of a decline in job security, when in fact the opposite could be true.

"An increase in employee tenure may reflect lower overall job security if it occurs during a recession, when relatively junior workers lose their jobs more rapidly than do workers with longer tenure," Salisbury said. "Conversely, a decrease in employee tenure can result during economic expansion, particularly in a tight labor market, as more job opportunities become available and experienced workers find better jobs."

Salisbury added: "The point is that these data need to be evaluated with care and simplistic assumptions should be avoided."

Major findings of the study include:

* Whereas the median tenure for working men between 25 and 64 years increased from 1951 to 1983 for all age categories, it actually declined between 1983 and 2000.
- from 15.3 years to 10.2 years for males aged 55-64;
- from 12.8 years to 9.5 years for males aged 45-54;
- from 7.3 years to 5.4 years for males aged 35-44.

But male tenure figures have been relatively stable since 1998.

* Female tenure levels rose for every age category between 1951 and 2000. And after 1983, tenure increases became most evident for the 45-54 age group, growing by a year over the 17-year period. In comparison, tenure grew by under six months for women between 35 and 44, and actually declined for women aged 25-34. It grew slightly for those aged 55-64.

* The proportion of employees with 20 or more years of tenure with current employers increased slowly but steadily throughout the 1990s, reaching just over 10% in 2000.

* Trends and levels vary significantly between public and private sectors. Data for 1983-2000 indicate much higher tenure levels in the public sector and trends have moved in opposite directions between the two sectors. At the end of the 20th century, public-sector tenure levels were over twice those of the private sector. This may be partly explained by the tendency of government workers to be older than their counterparts in private industry. Also, there is a lesser likelihood of public-sector employees being laid off or being affected by cyclical factors to the degrees experienced by private-sector workers, for example those in construction or wholesale and retail trade.