So much for reminiscing about the good old days, when many workers held one stable job throughout their careers. New research appearing in the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s January EBRI Notes finds that workers’ median tenure in their current job has remained virtually unchanged for the past 25 years: 5.1 years at the same job in 2008, compared with 5.0 years in 1983.

These overall results “mask a small but significant decrease” in men’s median tenure, due to a correlating increase in median tenure among women, notes Craig Copeland, EBRI senior research associate and author of the study.

Men ages 55-64 had the highest median tenure level for any age group, 15.3 years as reported in the 1983 survey. However, even these results do not cover a lifetime career, “as the median worker would not have started his or her current job until after age 40,” Copeland points out.

Additional study results, available at ebri.org, include:

• Gender differences: The median tenure for male employees declined from 5.9 years in 1983 to 5.2 years in 2008, while the median tenure for female workers increased from 4.2 years in 1983 to 4.9 years in 2008.
• Public versus private: Private-sector workers’ median tenure held steady over much of the quarter century, while public-sector workers’ tenure increased by a full year, to seven years. Median job tenure in the public sector is currently about 80% higher than that of private sector employees.
• Age differences: While the percentage of workers having 25 or more years on the job declined for workers ages 45-64, for those between ages 60-64 the percentage increased by more than 3% between 2006 and 2008 to approximately 20% after a “fairly steep decline” between 1983 and 2006. The decline for those ages 55-59 was persistent over the entire 25-year period: 22.7% to 17.6%. Ages 45-54 saw a more moderate decline from 1983 to 2008, from 12.9% to 10.1%.

“The persistent pattern of job changing has important implications for a worker’s potential income in retirement,” the study notes. “Because defined benefit pensions have a formula based on tenure and average salary, workers who frequently change jobs will not receive the maximum benefit from this type of retirement plan.”