This piece started from something we linked in Signals. Josh Bersin's argument that workers and employers have been quietly decoupling for sixty years assembles a striking set of figures: the median tenure of a company in the S&P 500 has gone from twelve or thirteen years in the 1970s to four or five, the average American worker now experiences 2.5 layoffs in a career, and trust in company leadership sits at 19 percent.
It is a good argument and the direction is right. But it measures how long companies last, not how long people stay, and there is a public series that measures the second thing directly. It complicates the story in a way worth knowing about before anyone builds a retention strategy on it.
The figure, and the decade behind it
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics surveys employee tenure every two years. In January 2024, median tenure with a current employer across all wage and salary workers was 3.9 years. The release notes that this is the lowest since January 2002.
| Survey | Median tenure, all workers |
|---|---|
| January 2014 | 4.6 years |
| January 2016 | 4.2 years |
| January 2018 | 4.2 years |
| January 2020 | 4.1 years |
| January 2022 | 4.1 years |
| January 2024 | 3.9 years |
A fall of 0.7 years over a decade, about 15 percent. Real, consistent, and considerably less dramatic than the language usually attached to it.
The phrase "lowest since January 2002" is doing quiet work in that release, and it is worth pausing on. It means tenure was at or below today's level before 2002, which is to say during the era that the loyalty story treats as the good old days. Whatever happened to job tenure, it is not a straight line down from a golden age.
Where the decline actually is
Break it by age and the picture changes shape.
| Survey | Aged 25 to 34 | Aged 55 to 64 |
|---|---|---|
| January 2014 | 3.0 years | 10.4 years |
| January 2016 | 2.8 years | 10.1 years |
| January 2018 | 2.8 years | 10.1 years |
| January 2020 | 2.8 years | 9.9 years |
| January 2022 | 2.8 years | 9.8 years |
| January 2024 | 2.7 years | 9.6 years |
Younger workers lost 0.3 years over the decade. Older workers lost 0.8. Both are small, and both are much smaller than the thing that dominates the table: the gap between the two groups is 6.9 years.
A 28-year-old cannot have fifteen years of tenure. The headline figure is therefore substantially a measure of who is in the workforce, and it moves when the age mix moves. Reading a change in it as a change in how people feel about their employers attributes to culture what demographics largely explain.
The same applies to sector. Median tenure in the public sector is 6.2 years against 3.5 in the private sector. An economy shifting employment between the two will move the national median without a single person changing their mind about anything.
Two more splits from the same release, for completeness: men are at 4.2 years and women at 3.6, both down from 4.3 and 3.8 in 2022.
What this does and does not license
It does not support "nobody is loyal any more". Within every age group the movement over a decade is a fraction of a year, and the level was lower before 2002.
It does support a gradual, broad-based shortening. Every cell in the table falls. Nothing here says tenure is stable; it says the change is slow and general rather than sudden and generational.
It says nothing about why anyone left. Tenure is a stock measure. A 3.9-year median is consistent with a healthy market where people move for better work and with a miserable one where they move to escape, and the series cannot distinguish them. Bersin's argument is about the second reading, and the tenure data neither confirms nor refutes it.
It leaves the mechanism to other evidence. The strongest finding on timing comes from elsewhere: Rubenstein and colleagues, pooling 117 studies, report a correlation of −0.27 between tenure and voluntary turnover. People who quit tend to do it early, which is a claim about the shape of the risk rather than about its level, and it is more actionable than the national median. That is the subject of where the leaving risk actually sits.
Why the framing matters commercially
A retention business case built on "tenure is collapsing" is built on a figure that fell 15 percent in a decade, mostly for compositional reasons, from a level that was lower twenty years earlier. It will not survive a sceptical finance director who looks up the series.
A case built on the age structure survives, because the age structure is real and is in your own headcount data. If a large share of your workforce is between 25 and 34, your median tenure is going to be somewhere near 2.7 years whatever you do, and the question is not how to move it but which departures within it you actually mind. That distinction, between turnover you chose and turnover you did not, is the one with evidence behind it, and it is set out in what losing an employee actually costs.
A note on the source
The BLS series is a household survey supplement, so tenure is self-reported and the survey covers the United States only. European comparisons exist through Eurostat and the OECD but are constructed differently and are not directly comparable, which is why this piece does not mix them.
The two-year interval also means the most recent reading is January 2024. The next survey covers January 2026 and had not been published when this was written.
Common questions
What is the average length of time people stay in a job? In the United States, median tenure with a current employer was 3.9 years in January 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Medians are used rather than averages because a small number of very long tenures distort the mean.
Is job tenure falling? Gradually. The median fell from 4.6 years in 2014 to 3.9 in 2024, about 15 percent over a decade, and the January 2024 figure is the lowest since January 2002.
Do younger workers change jobs more often? Considerably. Median tenure is 2.7 years for 25 to 34 year olds and 9.6 years for 55 to 64 year olds. Some of that is behaviour and much of it is arithmetic: a younger worker cannot have accumulated a long tenure.
Is the decline a generational change in loyalty? The data does not support that reading. Within each age group the change over a decade is a fraction of a year, and the national median was at or below today's level before 2002. Much of the aggregate movement reflects the age and sector mix of the workforce.
Does tenure differ by sector? Yes, substantially. Median tenure is 6.2 years in the public sector and 3.5 years in the private sector.
Does short tenure mean an organisation has a problem? Not on its own. Tenure is a stock measure that cannot distinguish people leaving for better work from people leaving to escape, and it is heavily determined by the age profile of the workforce.
Where does the risk of someone leaving concentrate? Early. A meta-analysis of 117 studies finds a correlation of −0.27 between tenure and voluntary turnover, meaning those who quit tend to do so earlier in their time with an employer.
Sources
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Tenure Summary, January 2024
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Tenure Table 1: median years of tenure with current employer by age and sex
- Rubenstein, Eberly, Lee & Mitchell (2018), Surveying the forest: a meta-analysis of the antecedents of voluntary employee turnover, Personnel Psychology 71(1), 23-65
- Josh Bersin, The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies
