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No Gold Watch: For Most Workers, Romantic Notion of a Career Job Never Existed, and Still Does Not January 11, 2010 (SmartPros) The romantic Ozzie and Harriet-era notion of a worker spending a lifetime with a single employer and then retiring with the proverbial gold watch is just that -- a romantic notion. Career jobs never existed for most workers, and still do not, according to a study released today by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
The study, in the January 2010 EBRI Notes, finds that the median tenure of workers -- the midpoint of wage and salary workers' length of employment in their current job -- was virtually unchanged over the past 25 years: 5.1 years at the same job in 2008, compared with 5.0 years in 1983.
"Over the past 25 years, the median tenure of all wage and salary workers age 20 or older has stayed at or just below five years," writes Craig Copeland, EBRI senior research associate and author of the study. "However, the overall trend masks a small but significant decrease in median tenure among men, which was offset by an increase in median tenure among women. As for career jobs, the highest median tenure level for any age group (15.3 years in 1983 for males ages 55-64) certainly does not cover an entire lifetime career, as the median worker would not have started his or her current job until after age 40."
The study, available at www.ebri.org, provides these additional details:
In addition, a worker who changes employers must decide what to do with any retirement plan assets he or she has accumulated (either in a defined benefit or a defined contribution 401(k)-type plan), a situation that has become more prevalent with the growth in DB pension plans that allow a lump-sum distribution. Thus, benefit preservation becomes an important concern for these employees as well as for their plan sponsors. If employees do not retain these assets in some type of savings vehicle for retirement, they may forgo an important source of supplemental income to their Social Security benefits or be forced to remain in the work force, the study says.
The January 2010 EBRI Notes updates previous EBRI publications that have examined employee tenure data of American workers. It is based on data from the January 2008 Supplement to the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) and compares 2008 results with the trends from previous CPS publications on employee tenure.
2010 SmartPros Ltd. All rights reserved.
Source: EBRI
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