Average Job Tenure by Country (another stat the USA sucks at)
You could argue that Greece is a tad high, but there is no doubt that our average tenure has tanked since the last time I checked.
Greece 13
Portugal 12.5
Belgium 12
Italy 11.5
France 11.5
Poland 11
Sweden 10.5
Germany 10.5
Norway 9.75
Czech Republic 9.5
Spain 9.25
Hungary 9
Canada 9
Denmark 8.75
Ireland 8.5
Britain 8.25
United States 4
A few years ago, the average American stayed with a company for about 7 years.
Policy think tanks blame schools and teachers for this in 3, 2, 1….
I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing.
When most of the PIIGS countries top the list, you have to think twice.
4 years? Job insecurity is part of the overall plan to drive down wages.
And these figures somehow correlate with what?
Does the four-year average mean that U.S. workers lack stability, or does it mean that they have more mobility (both upward and choice of location) than workers in smaller and less prosperous countries?
They’re just isolated numbers. If you ranked basketball players who couldn’t hit free throws, Wilt Chamberlain and Shaquille O’Neal would be near the top of the list. But if I were a coach, I’d want them in my lineup.
One thing 4 year average tenure sure doesn’t correlate to is growing middle class incomes.
” Shorter job tenure is associated with a new era of insecurity, volatility, and risk. It’s part of the same employment picture as the increase in part-time, freelance, and contract work; mass layoffs and buyouts; “
As one whose first job lasted 28 years, second job not quite four and who has now been self-employed/freelancing for 10, I understand the point you’re making.
However, if you’re looking for relatively low insecurity, volatility and risk, I’d get the hell out of Greece and head for the USofA in a New York minute.
Word.
We are all temps now.
C’est vrai . I was astounded to see that we fell from last place to an even more distant last place on this list.
That figure is up from 3.7 years in 2002 and 3.5 in 1983. Here is a link to the median numbers for various occupational categories (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.t06.htm)
One survey suggested that young men have been especially hard hit as their access to blue-collar occupations has declined over the past three decades, they’ve been left unable to find work or are increasingly likely to work in jobs that pay less. In 1980, young men earned 85% of the average wage in the labor market; today, they earn only 58%.
This lack of upward mobility seems evident to me as number of people who are forced to stay in low wage jobs (Wal Mart) has increased simply because there is no where else to go. One doesn’t make the leap from Wal Mart to much higher positions without going through the intervening steps in the progression. The loss of blue collar jobs has contributed greatly to the inequality we have today, with those who have nothing vs those who have everything.
Raising the low end wage scale is really a bandaid approach, because at the end of the day, there is still nowhere to go. I sometimes think that we have to have a reindustrialization of America effort, but I’m not convinced that’s possible in a global economy. There are only so many cars that can be built. I wish I had a good answer, but I know that more Wal Mart jobs is not it.
“I sometimes think that we have to have a reindustrialization of America effort, but I’m not convinced that’s possible in a global economy. ”
An industrial policy that went beyond “ever lower taxes” would be nice. The green manufacturing economy like the one Obama described when he was running would have been great. In an effort to appear “moderate” he went and gave 30% of the nutbags in the country veto power over his agenda though, so that never happened.