Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. It is a beautiful day outside, but we are inside, ready to dive into some data.
We really are. Our housemate Daniel sent us a voice note this morning that got us both thinking. He was reminiscing about that old image of the career man, the person who starts at a company at twenty-two and retires forty years later with a gold watch and a pension.
The classic mid-century dream. Or nightmare, depending on how much you like your coworkers, I suppose.
Exactly. Daniel was asking if that is completely dead, or if we are just in a temporary state of chaos. He wanted to know about the current state of employment tenure and how these career trajectories have shifted into what he called non-linear paths.
It is a great question because there is a lot of myth-making around this. People often say, oh, nobody stays at a job for more than a year anymore, or the gig economy has destroyed the stable career. But when you actually look at the numbers, the reality is a bit more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
Well, let us start there then. What does the data actually tell us? If we look at the United States first, what is the median tenure for a worker today?
So, the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the median tenure for wage and salary workers is about 4.6 years. What is interesting is that this number has been remarkably stable for the last decade. Back in January of 2014, it was also about 4.6 years.
Four point six years. That feels like a long time if you are in the tech world, but a short time if you are thinking about that forty-year career. Does that vary a lot by age? I imagine the twenty-somethings are dragging that average down.
Oh, absolutely. The age gap is massive. For workers aged fifty-five to sixty-four, the median tenure is about 10.3 years. Almost a decade plus. But for workers aged twenty-five to thirty-four, it drops down to about 2.7 years. It makes sense, right? When you are young, you are exploring, you are trying to find the right fit, and you are often jumping for those early-career salary bumps.
Right, and in your twenties, a two-year stint feels like an epoch. When you are fifty, two years is just a couple of budget cycles. But let us talk about Israel for a second, since we are sitting here in Jerusalem. The high-tech scene here is famous for its volatility, but does it follow the same pattern?
Israel is a fascinating case study because you have this clash of cultures. On one hand, you have the old-school institutional loyalty that came out of the socialist roots of the state, like the big utility companies or the defense sector. In those places, you still see people staying for twenty or thirty years. But then you have the Silicon Wadi, the high-tech hub.
And there, the turnover is legendary.
It is. But even there, we have seen some cooling off. A few years ago, it felt like people were changing jobs every eighteen months just because a recruiter breathed in their direction. But recently, as the market has matured and companies are focusing more on profitability over pure growth, we are seeing a bit more caution. People are looking for stability. They are looking for companies that have a clear path forward, rather than just the next venture capital round.
That brings up Daniel's point about peak instability. Have we reached a plateau? Are we going to see a return to longer tenures, or is the three-year hop the new permanent normal?
I think we are at a point of stabilization, but at a lower baseline than our parents' generation. The social contract has changed, Corn. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, there was an implicit agreement: you give us your loyalty, and we give you a pension and job security. That contract was torn up in the nineteen-eighties and nineties with the rise of shareholder primacy and mass layoffs.
And once the companies stopped being loyal to the employees, the employees stopped being loyal to the companies. It is a rational response to a changed environment.
Exactly. If you know that you could be part of a ten percent reduction in force next Tuesday regardless of your performance, why wouldn't you keep your options open? Why wouldn't you take that twenty percent raise at the competitor?
It is funny you mention the reduction in force. We talked about this a bit in episode three hundred ninety-seven, when we looked at how artificial intelligence is hollowing out the middle of the career ladder. If the middle rungs are missing, you have to jump to a different ladder entirely to keep climbing.
That is a perfect connection. The non-linear path Daniel mentioned isn't always a choice; it is often a necessity. If your company doesn't have a clear internal promotion track because those middle-management roles are being automated or flattened, you have to move out to move up.
So, if the median is 4.6 years, what industries are actually keeping people? Who is still getting the gold watches?
It is mostly the public sector and heavy industry. In the United States, the median tenure for government employees is around 6.8 years. That is significantly higher than the private sector median of about 4.1 years. Manufacturing also tends to have higher tenure, around 5.5 years, because the skills are often very specific to that company's machinery or processes.
What about the tech giants? You hear stories about people at places like Google or Nvidia who have been there since the early days.
Those are the outliers. Even at the big firms, the median tenure is often surprisingly low, sometimes around two or three years. But that is skewed by the fact that they are hiring so many new people. If you hire ten thousand people this year, your average tenure is going to look low even if your veterans are staying forever.
That is a good point about the math. But I want to go deeper on the psychological side of this. If we are moving from job to job every few years, what does that do to our sense of professional identity? We used to be a Boeing engineer or a New York Times journalist. Now, we are a software architect who happens to be at a fintech startup this year.
It shifts the identity from the institution to the craft. You are a writer, or a coder, or a marketer, and the company is just the current venue for your work. It is a very different way of moving through the world. It requires a lot more self-management. You are the CEO of your own career, which sounds empowering, but it is also exhausting.
It really is. You have to handle your own upskilling, your own networking, and in many places, your own retirement planning. We touched on this in episode three hundred twenty-four when we discussed why we are still so overworked despite all this productivity technology. The overhead of managing a fragmented career is a full-time job in itself.
And let us not forget the impact on teams. If you are a manager and you know that half your team will be gone in thirty-six months, how much do you invest in their long-term development? How much do you care about the deep culture of the team?
It creates this transactional atmosphere. I'll give you my best work for two years, you give me a good salary and a brand name on my resume, and then we both move on. No hard feelings. But you lose that deep institutional knowledge. You lose the people who remember why a certain decision was made ten years ago.
I see that in the high-tech sector here in Israel all the time. Companies are constantly reinventing the wheel because the person who built the original wheel left for a startup in Tel Aviv six months ago. It is a massive hidden cost to the economy.
So, do you think we will ever see a return to the single-employer model? Or is that just a historical anomaly of the post-war era?
I think the forty-year career was the anomaly. If you look at human history before the industrial revolution, people had very fluid, multi-faceted roles. You were a farmer, but you were also a builder, and maybe a trader. The idea of being a cog in a single corporate machine for your entire adult life is actually a relatively new and perhaps brief experiment.
That is a perspective I hadn't considered. So, the non-linear path is actually a return to form?
In a way, yes. We are moving toward what some people call the portfolio career. You might have a main job, a side project, and a few freelance clients. Or you might spend five years in one industry and then completely pivot. The data shows that the average worker will hold 12 to 15 different jobs in their lifetime. That is a lot of transitions.
Twelve to fifteen jobs. That is a lot of interviews, Herman. I am getting stressed just thinking about it.
Well, the good news is that we are getting better at it. The tools for job searching and the social acceptability of jumping have made it much easier. It used to be that if you had a gap in your resume or too many short stints, you were seen as a red flag. Now, if you've been at the same place for fifteen years, some recruiters might actually wonder if you've become stagnant.
That is the flip side of the coin, isn't it? The penalty for loyalty.
It is a real thing. There is data suggesting that people who stay at the same company for more than a few years earn significantly less over their lifetime than those who switch. The loyalty discount is a harsh reality of the modern labor market.
So, what is the takeaway for our listeners? If you are sitting there in your third year at a job and you are feeling that itch, is it just the statistics catching up with you?
I think the key is to be intentional. Don't leave just because the median says you should, but don't stay out of a false sense of loyalty to an institution that might not be loyal to you. The most successful people I see are those who treat their career like a series of projects. Each project should give you a new skill, a new network, or a new level of responsibility. When the project is finished, it is time to look for the next one, whether that is inside your current company or somewhere else.
And for the employers listening, how do you fight this? If you want to keep your best people, how do you beat the 4.6-year median?
You have to make the internal move as attractive as the external one. Most people leave because they want a new challenge or a raise. If you can provide those things without them having to change their email address, they might stay. But you have to be proactive. You can't wait for them to come to you with a competing offer. By then, it is usually too late.
It is about creating a internal marketplace for talent. We saw some of this in our discussion about remote work hubs in episode three hundred forty-five. When you decouple the job from the specific office, you open up more internal possibilities, but you also make it easier for them to work for anyone else in the world.
It is a double-edged sword. But that is the world we are living in. I don't think we are going back to the gold watch. I think we are going toward a world where the watch is something you buy yourself because you finally hit your goals as an independent professional.
That is a bit more solitary, but I suppose it is the reality of twenty twenty-six. Herman, I want to talk about the concept of portable benefits before we wrap up. Because if we are jumping around so much, things like health insurance and retirement savings become a nightmare to manage.
This is a huge policy debate right now. There is a lot of talk about decoupling benefits from the employer entirely. Imagine a system where your benefits follow you, not your job. You have a central account for your health, your pension, and your training budget, and every employer you work for contributes to it proportionally.
That would take so much of the friction out of the system. It would make that twelve-job career much less terrifying.
It would, but it requires a massive shift in how we think about the role of the corporation in society. We are still using a system designed for that nineteen-fifties model, even though the labor market has moved on.
It is like trying to run modern software on a computer from forty years ago. It kind of works, but it is slow and it crashes all the time.
Exactly. And the crashes are what we see as career burnouts or long periods of unemployment between roles.
Well, this has been a fascinating look at the data. It is reassuring in a way to know that the world isn't as chaotic as it feels, but also a reminder that the old stability is gone.
It is a different kind of stability, Corn. It is the stability of your own skills and your own adaptability. That is the only thing you can really count on.
Well said. Before we sign off, I want to say a huge thank you to Daniel for the prompt. It really sparked a great conversation here.
Definitely. And hey, if you are listening and you found this helpful, or if you have your own thoughts on the four-year itch, we would love to hear from you.
Also, if you could take a second to leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify, it would mean a lot. It really helps other people find the show and keeps us going.
It genuinely does. We check those reviews more often than we probably should.
You can find all our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today, at myweirdprompts dot com. There is a full archive there and a contact form if you want to send us a prompt of your own.
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Alright, that is it for today. Thanks for joining us on My Weird Prompts. I am Corn.
And I am Herman Poppleberry. We will see you next time.
Take care, everyone.
So, Corn, how long have you been at this podcasting gig now?
Oh, since the beginning, Herman. I think I am well past the median tenure at this point.
Does that mean you are looking for a twenty percent raise?
I'll talk to the house manager about it.
Good luck with that. Bye everyone!
Bye!
So, thinking about the Israel data again, did you see that report about the defense sector? They were saying that even there, the younger generation is starting to push for shorter contracts. They want the prestige of having served in those elite units, but they don't necessarily want to stay until they are fifty-five.
It is the same thing we talked about with the brand name on the resume. Spend three years in Unit eight thousand two hundred, and you are set for life in the private sector. The military is becoming the ultimate elite university and first employer combined.
And that creates a huge brain drain for the state. If all your best cyber experts leave at twenty-five to start a fintech company, how do you maintain your national security infrastructure?
You have to change the model. You have to make the mission more compelling than the stock options. Or, you have to find a way to let them do both. We are seeing more of these hybrid roles where people split their time between the public and private sectors.
That is the ultimate non-linear path. A foot in both worlds.
It might be the only way to keep the system running. Anyway, we should probably let people get back to their jobs. Or their job searches.
Right. Until next time.
See ya.
Wait, did I mention the manufacturing tenure was five point five years? I should have double-checked if that was for durable or non-durable goods.
Herman, let it go. We are done.
I just want to be precise!
You were precise enough. Let's go get some coffee.
Fine. Coffee it is.
My Weird Prompts is a production of three guys in a house in Jerusalem. Thanks for listening.
And thanks for being part of our community. We really appreciate you.
Seriously. Bye for real now.
Bye!
