2008 Number of Jobs, Labor Market Experience, and Earnings Growth: Results from a National Longitudinal Survey — 2008-06-27

The average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 10.8 jobs from age 18 to age 42, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Nearly two- thirds of these jobs were held from ages 18 to 27. These findings are from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a survey of 9,964 men and women who were ages 14 to 22 when first interviewed in 1979 and ages 41 to 50 when interviewed most recently in 2006-07. These respondents were born in the years 1957 to 1964, the later years of the "baby boom" that occurred in the United States from 1946 to 1964. The survey spans more than a quarter century and provides information on work and nonwork experiences, training, schooling, income and assets, health conditions, and other characteristics.