2002 Employee Tenure — 2002-09-19

The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer (referred to as employee tenure) was 3.7 years in January 2002, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Since 1983, median employee tenure has ranged from 3.4 to 3.8 years in the years when such information was obtained. Information on employee tenure is obtained from supplemental questions in the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey of about 60,000 households that provides information on the labor force status, demographics, and other characteristics of the civilian noninstitutional pop- ulation age 16 and over. The supplemental questions about employee tenure have been essentially the same since 1983. Prior to that year, the CPS ques- tions on employee tenure were significantly different. As a result, this re- lease focuses only on comparable data from 1983 to 2002.