Event

A major challenge to sociologists’ contention that employment precarity in the U.S. is increasing is the repeatedly replicated finding that U.S. job tenures have been stable or even increasing in the last three decades, particularly for women. The dominant explanation for these trends is "masked instability", which argues that females' increasing propensity to remain in the workforce after marriage and childbirth has offset aggregate tendencies towards increased precarity. This paper develops a formal demographic approach to estimating and interpreting “tenure table” models. Applying a recently proposed estimator to the Current Population Survey from 1996 to 2020 and novel administrative hiring records, I find that male and female expected tenures have trended upwards slightly over the period I investigate. Masked instability does not plausibly explain 21st century trends. Almost all of the improvements in job stability reflect growth in expected tenure for college-educated workers. Job stability for less educated workers has remained stagnant. Finally, the increase in job stability for college educated workers reflects a reduction in short-term hazard most plausibly reflecting the widespread adoption of screening technologies. The college advantage in job stability is not primarily explained by sex differences within the college educated population.