2004 Employee Tenure — 2004-09-21

The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.0 years in January 2004, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. This measure, referred to as employee tenure, was 3.7 years in January 2002. Nearly 31 percent of workers age 25 and over had 10 or more years of tenure with their current employer in January 2004. 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 noninsti- tutional population age 16 and over. The questions about employee tenure have been essentially the same since 1983. Prior to that year, the ques- tions on employee tenure were significantly different. As a result, this release focuses only on comparable data from 1983 to 2004.