Last week one of my friends complained about the tendency of frequent job hopping. We were a group of four participating in an informal discussion over a few cups of coffee. As a group, we agreed that the average employee tenure would be close to two years. I decided to run through some employee data and establish the employee tenure benchmarks and share with the group.
LinkedIn contacts was the most appropriate data set for this analysis as I could easily get employment history of my first degree connections. I have a little over 2000 connections on LinkedIn.
The BS 6000 sampling method was used to arrive at a sample size to ensure the results would be representative of the total data size. I exported all my connections to a spreadsheet and randomly selected 250 contacts.
This post is a summary of the sample data.
Key findings: Employee Tenure Data
- The average employee tenure per job is 3.79 years, almost 2X of what my group estimated
- The median employee tenure per job is 2.96 years. So, 50% of the sample data (125 out of 150 connections) spent more than 2.96 years per job
- Compared to men, women have a 12% higher average tenure per job (4.10 years compared to 3.67 years for men) and a 26% higher median tenure per job (3.59 years per job compared to 2.86 years for men)
- The average employee tenure in their current jobs is 4.44 years
- The median employee tenure in their current jobs is 3.29 years. So, 125 of my 250 randomly selected contacts have been working in the same organization for more than 3.29 years
Employment Gap
- 21% employees had a gap of more than 30 days between their last job and present job
- Women had more instances of gap between jobs compared to men. 29% women had a break of more than a month between their last job and current job compared to 18% men
- The average employment gap for women is 12.78 months compared to 7.41 months for men
- The median gap for women is 5.05 months while it is 5.06 months for men
Employee Tenure Comparison based on Educational Qualification
Table 1: Average tenure per job in years
| Highest Degree | Average | Median |
| Masters / PG | 3.94 | 3.33 |
| Bachelors | 3.11 | 2.53 |
| High School / Diploma / UG | 5.07 | 3.83 |
Table 2: Tenure in the current job (in years)
| Highest Degree | Average | Median |
| Masters / PG | 4.93 | 4.04 |
| Bachelors | 3.04 | 2.30 |
| High School / Diploma / UG | 7.26 | 4.88 |
Representation of Women based on job function
For the sample data of 250 LinkedIn connections, women have the highest representation in HR (64%) followed by Client Relations (50%) and Marketing (50%).
Women have the lowest representation in sales (13%) and operations (20%).
| Job Function | Female | Male |
| HR | 64% | 36% |
| Client Relations | 50% | 50% |
| Marketing | 50% | 50% |
| Tech | 33% | 67% |
| Analytics | 27% | 73% |
| Operations | 20% | 80% |
| Sales | 13% | 87% |
| Total | 28% | 72% |
Further reading: How to create an employee value proposition to boost employee retention and productivity.
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