Been at your job for 10+ years? That’s increasingly unusual

Despite fears of a slowdown, the US labor market keeps showing signs of resilience, with 254,000 jobs added in September, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The odds that any of those new employees will still be at the same employer in a decade, however, are pretty low.

How to lose a job in 10 years

The latest BLS data on employee tenure shows that the number of American adults stepping down from long-term careers is stepping up. In 2024, the total percentage of employees aged 25 years or over who had been with their current employer for 10 years or more fell to just 30.2% — down 3% from only a decade prior.

So, how long should you stick around at a job? There’s no right answer, of course — though Fed data does show that job-movers tend to see better wage gains than job-stayers — but the average is around four years. Indeed, the same report found that the median years of tenure at a current employer was 3.9 years as of January, the lowest figure on record in 22 years.

Indeed, the concept of “a job for life” seems to be increasingly daunting for a generation of employees that like to keep their options open.

Interestingly, while women have historically trailed men in hitting the 10-year work milestone, the downward trend observed in recent years has been steeper for women, having decreased by 4.3% since 2018, compared with just 1.8% for men.

This disparity may have accelerated following the pandemic, when the “Great Resignation” saw a record ~47 million American workers quit their jobs in 2021 alone. Though evidence suggests this unprecedented exodus was years in the making, the immediate social upheaval of COVID-19 led to wide-reaching shifts in both perspective and lifestyle, which saw women, who typically hold more care obligations, quit their jobs at higher rates.