Changing Stability in U.S. Employment Relationships: A Tale of Two Tails

Raven Molloy, Christopher Smith and Abigail Wozniak

No 26694, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We confront two seemingly-contradictory observations about the US labor market: the rate at which workers change employers has declined since the 1980s, yet there is a commonly expressed view that long-term employment relationships are more difficult to attain. We reconcile these observations by examining how the distribution of employment tenure has changed in aggregate and for various demographic groups. We show that the fraction of workers with short tenure (less than a year) has been falling since the 1980s, consistent with the decline in job changing. Meanwhile, the fraction of workers with long tenure (20 years or more) has been rising modestly owing to an increase in long tenure for women and the ageing of the population. Long tenure has declined markedly among older men; this trend may have spurred popular perceptions that long-term employment is less common than in the past. The decline in long-tenure for men appears due to an increase in mid-career separations that reduce the likelihood of reaching long-tenure, rather than an increase in late-career separations. Nevertheless, survey evidence indicates that these changes in employment relationships are not associated with heightened concerns about job insecurity or decreases in job satisfaction as reported by workers. The decline in short-tenure is widespread, associated with fewer workers cycling among briefly-held jobs, and coincides with an increase in perceived job security among short tenure workers.

JEL-codes: J11 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: AG DAE EFG LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published as Raven Molloy & Christopher L. Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2024. "Changing Stability in U.S. Employment Relationships," Journal of Human Resources, vol 59(1), pages 35-69.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26694.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Changing Stability in U.S. Employment Relationships: A Tale of Two Tails (2024)
Working Paper: Changing Stability in U.S. Employment Relationships: A Tale of Two Tails (2022)
Working Paper: Changing Stability in U.S. Employment Relationships: A Tale of Two Tails (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26694

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26694

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().