Pop quiz hot shot –

Can you guess the median number of years that a worker (wage & salary) has been with their current employer as of January 2024?

3.9 years.

THAT’S IT.

And it keeps going down. In 2022, it was 4.1 years. 3.9 years is the lowest it’s been since January 2002!

The days of staying in a job for decades is gone. Long gone and getting further away.

That statistic comes from our friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Employee tenure” is the official term and they’ve been tracking that number for quite some time. (data in this article comes from BLS data released September 2024)

(and, for what it’s worth, in January 2016 and January 2018, the average tenure was 4.2 years, and it was 4.1 for 2022 and 2020)

To add a little color to the statistics, it’s important to know two things:

• 3.9 years is short and the shortest it’s been since 2002. It was as high at 4.6 for 2012 and 2014.
• The median changes based on age group. 55-65+ employees have been at it for 9.6 years. Those 25-34 have a median tenure of just 2.7 years.

Job turnover is most acute for younger employees, as you’d expect with summer and first jobs, but most people still aren’t sticking with the same job for 40 years.

What does this mean for the number of jobs an average work has? If you change jobs every 4 years, that’s a lot of jobs!

How Many Jobs the Average Worker Has

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess with fuzzy math. The BLS has that data too but it’s based on a much smaller data set because you have to track individuals over a lifetime!

The BLS published a study in 2015 that looked at the number of jobs held by folks born between 1957 and 1964 from when they were 18 to 48. The provocatively named article, “Number of Jobs, Labor Market Experience, and Earnings Growth Among Americans at 50: Results from a Longitudinal Survey” was based on a survey of 9,964 people.

Ready for the answer?

• The average worker held 11.9 jobs from the ages of 18 to 50.
• The average 5.5 jobs between 18-24, 4.5 jobs from 25-34, 2.9 jobs from 35-44, and 1.7 jobs from 45-50 (there’s some overlap between age groups)
• Nearly half of the jobs were held before the age of 25.

There were a lot of other fascinating statistics in there too, like individuals were employed on average 78% of the weeks from 18 – 50. The news release does a great job summarizing the findings.

Personally, I’ve had many jobs (the ones in blue were jobs I had before I turned 25):

1. Expediter & order taker at a Chinese food takeout restaurant
2. Banquet waiter at Three Village Inn
3. Summer intern at Periphonics, an IT telephony company
4. Summer intern at Intelligenesis, a defunct startup in New York
5. TA for a handful of courses at Carnegie Mellon
6. Software engineer at Northrop Grumman, defense contractor
7. Software engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton, defense contractor
8. Self-Employed or at a company where I own significant (30%+) equity – since 2008

So when I look back at my jobs, I’ve had quite a few.

Abandon the Myth of the Forever Job

The data shows two very obvious things – very few people have one job for their entire working adult life. In fact, the pattern seems to be a lot of jobs before you’re 25 and then only a handful of moves until retirement.

If this is the case, why are there so many experts telling us we should stick with one career?

No group has ever “stuck with” a career for 40 years. Not baby boomers, not Gen X, not Gen Y, not millennials – not a single age cohort you want to pick.

When I worked in the defense industry, I worked for two companies – Northrop Grumman and Booz Allen Hamilton. When I was at Northrop Grumman, I started at $60,000 a year and received 3-4% raises each year. I was there for three years before leaving for Booz Allen Hamilton, where I immediately enjoyed a 36% raise to $90,000 a year.

It takes 12 years of 3.5% raises to get from $60,000 to $90,000. Or one move.

When I made the move, I was told that you shouldn’t switch between jobs too often or you develop a “reputation.” Those types of statements only help companies and managers who don’t like finding new people to replace old people who were doing a good job.

What if the situation were reversed? If there’s an economic downturn, will your employer keep you around because they’re afraid of getting a reputation of letting people go?

No way. They would let you go. If they don’t, they risk going out of business. If they go out of business, there is no reputation to protect.

There are no forever jobs.

We are all freelancers whether we recognize it or not.

We need to start treating our careers like freelancers treat gigs and clients. We need to take steps to approach our work differently.

What does that look like?

Build Income Insurance

Freelancers know that the gigs that pay the bills today aren’t forever. Projects will end. Clients will leave, slow down, or go bankrupt. Irregular income is a part of life.

We need income insurance. You buy insurance for everything that’s important to you, from your car to your house to your pets (maybe).

But how do you insure your job? (especially if it’s a high paying job that doesn’t require a college degree)

Passive income is your insurance against your job. Developing your streams of income will protect you in so many ways. One of the things people talk about is “F U Money,” or the idea that if you had enough money you could tell your boss to pound sand if you really wanted to.

They view that money as a big lottery-esq sum but you don’t need that much. You need what that money represents, which is a stream of income that can replace your primary income (job).

You can build non-W2 income by saving money and investing it into passive sources. Or you can develop a side hustle (that you can also invest into passive sources of income).

The goal is to unshackle your from your job so you can make smarter and better decisions. So you aren’t beholden to that employer. So you can go on interviews without fear of reprisal from because you have a separate, untouchable stream.

Maintain financial flexibility

When you knew you were working somewhere for decades, it makes a lot of sense to “settle down” and buy a house.

And buying a house is great. We own our house, we love living in it, but we’re not planning on moving for decades.

When you might change jobs every four years, it makes less sense.

A house tethers you financially and physically. You owe a mortgage payment, which is often higher than comparable rents, and you can’t move easily. Selling the house is a long process, with its own financial costs, and that inertia can get in the way of good long-term decisions. You also can take fewer risks because your monthly expenses are higher too. If you’ve developed some streams of income, more of that safety net is gobbled up by the mortgage and property taxes.

Have you ever heard of the term golden handcuffs? It’s when your compensation is set up in a way that it makes it very hard for you to leave your employer. If you have high monthly expenses and can’t take any risks, those are a type of handcuff. Avoid those and give yourself the flexibility, especially when you’re younger.

The frequency of job change decreases after 25. If you want to buy a house, look to do so after then. There’s no rush. There will still be houses.

Level Up Your Skills

If you work a corporate job, there are a ton of benefits outside of compensation. At Northrop Grumman, they would pay for a Masters and even a Doctorate. The same at Booz Allen Hamilton. That might be the case for you too. Use those opportunities to level up your career trajectory on someone else’s dime.

For the company, it made business sense. They knew that if you gained more credentials, if you learned new skills, then you could be billed at a higher rate on contracts. A Masters degree was worth 3-5 years of professional work experience on a contract.

If your field doesn’t care about certifications or degrees, there are other skills you can learn and develop that have significant value. Look to increase those while you’re working and maybe you can parlay that into compensation in the next job.

Plus, those skills and degrees stay with you. You have to “pay” with your time but the benefits are yours to keep forever, no matter who you work for.

Focus on Yourself, Your Family, Your Friends

You must maintain a healthy lifestyle with respect to your body, your mind, and your relationships. It’s very easy to sacrifice all those things for your job.

When I was at Northrop Grumman, I was part of a “leadership program” that held extra “development” events. I remember one event where a panel of managers talked about their careers, what they’d do differently, and other subjects meant to educate us on the future.

One of them told a classic allegory, attributed to Bryan Dyson (former President and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises) from his commencement speech at Georgia Tech in 1996:

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends and spirit … and you’re keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for Balance in your life.

It’s easy to let your job dominate your time, energy and emotion. It’s really easy if you love your job, love your co-workers, and think you’ll be at that job for decades. It gives you a sense of fulfillment, one of the highest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The reality is that you can love everything about your job… but recognize your job won’t be forever. The statistics bear that out.

Don’t sacrifice your family, your health, your friends, or your spirit for a job that, with no ill intent, will drop you in a heartbeat.

How many jobs have you had? How has your relationship with work changed over the years?