The Definition of Employee Tenure

Tenure generally refers to the number of years workers stay with one employer. However, a closer look at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that several factors affect employees' tenure. Therefore, as employers define the tenure parameters of their companies, they should consider things such as economic conditions and their employees' age, gender and position.


Nationwide Tenure
More Americans are sticking with the same employer longer, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers generally had been with the same employer for 4.4 years in 2010, which was nearly four months longer than employees had remained on the same job in 2008. The bureau links the increase in tenure among workers during that period to a large number of job losses in the midst of an economic downturn. The BLS data on employee tenure comes from a population survey, which includes workforce information from people in about 60,000 households.

Tenure by Occupation
Workers in certain occupations tend to remain with the same employer longer than others. BLS data show the median tenure for employees in management and professional positions was 5.2 years in 2010, which was the longest overall tenure among the bureau's largest occupational groups. Tenure was even higher among some specific professions such as architecture and engineering, where employees' median tenure was 5.7 years in 2010. By comparison, workers in service occupations that year had been with the same employer for about three years.

Tenure by Age
Tenure among older employees is significantly higher than it is among younger workers. In 2010, the median tenure among employees who ranged in age from 55 to 64 was ten years, according to the BLS. That was three times higher than workers who were 25 to 34 years old and had been with the same employer for about three years. The BLS data show that just 13 percent of workers ages 30 to 34 had been their current employer for ten years in 2010. More than 50 percent of workers who were 60 to 64 that year reported they had been with the same employer for ten years.

Tenure by Gender
The BLS indicates that men stay with the same employer slightly longer than women. The median tenure for men was 4.6 years in 2010, and it was 4.2 years for women that year. However, both men and women had been with their employers longer in 2010 than in 2008, when their tenures were 4.2 years and 3.9 years, respectively.