For the purposes of this poll:
Subtract the age at which you started working from your current age, then divide by the number of employers you’ve had in your life.
Counting only jobs since I graduated from university - 7 years
Your formula works OK for me, as I have no periods of unemployment to consider, but it could matter to others. Maybe adding up all your lengths of service and dividing by number of jobs would work better?
I’m not going to try that formula, because I took several years out for childrearing and two years out for studying (I worked the other studying years), and some of the jobs were never meant to be long-term either.
But someone here recently described his deadbeat sister, including the line ‘never held down a job for more than two years,’ and I though oh my God, that’s me! It must average out to less than a year.
Do we count student jobs and holiday jobs? If so, 2 1/2 years. But that’s a bit complicated, because there’s overlap. If we’re counting “professional” jobs…hmm, not much different actually. 3 years.
Is there a purpose behind the poll, or just for fun?
Missed the edit window while I was building the poll.
PLEASE SUBTRACT ANY YEAR(S) OF UNEMPLOYMENT OR SCHOOLING FROM YOUR TOTAL YEARS OF SERVICE.
(thanks, one and only)
mmm
Just for fun.
With that in mind, lets not over-complicate the formula; go with what feels right.
The equation doesn’t work well for me. I got 6 months or less. But I always have multiple jobs (5 at the moment); I only quit one job I’ve had in under 6 months, and all others I worked at least a few months over 1 year. Currently I’ve been employed at one of my current jobs for 4 years, and another for 3.
This poll will be skewed by the weighted avg. age of those responding to the poll.
I did lots of house-sitting in HS and I worked some low pay jobs for the UofI but they were all of the short-term/odd job variety. I only counted employers who sent me W2’s.
I’m 26 and I’ve been working steady since 14. I got laid off for a few months last year so I worked the 2010 Census which brought my total of W2 employers to 3.
26-14 = 12/3 = 4 years average
Before I read the instructions I got a similar result. I’ve worked 7 years here, 4 at my HS job, and 2 months for the Census - which really drags down my average.
7+4+.17 = 11.7/3 = 3.72 years average
7+4 = 11/2 = 5.5 years average
Edit: I chose 4-5yrs in the poll.
I worked from 14 to 49. That’s 35 years. There were eleven jobs with taxed income, most of which were summer or part-time jobs. From 23 to 49, there were only two full time: from 23 to 32 and 32 to 49 and they were really the same job in two different places. There were only two part-time jobs concurrent with the two “real” jobs.
Your formula works out to 3.2 years per job, but really doesn’t account for my 26 years of employment in the same job.
Been working for 21 1/2 years now. 3 jobs (7 years, 3 1/2, and 11). Averages out to 7.
I said 3-4 years, because I’ve had three real full time jobs since I started working 10 years ago. As averages easily do, you don’t get a sense of the true picture: I’ve had my current job for 8 years, my first two jobs where 1.5 years and 4 months respectively.
The formula doesn’t work for me too well, since I’ve only had two employers in my life. All the other jobs I’ve had I’ve been self-employed.
I’ve been working for 20 years. My first two jobs were 1-year only, which kinda skews my average. My first real corporate job was 8 years and my second was 6.5 years. I’ve only been in my current job for 2 years which also drags the average down. I didn’t count my current job (who knows how long I’ll be here?) so I averaged the rest and came to 4-5 years.
For professional (post-college) jobs: 4-5 years.
Counting all the McJobs and manual labor positions I had from ages 14-22 takes the average down to under one year.
Right now, I’m at 3.3 years per employer. 5 years with the Army, 2 years with my first engineering company, and about 2.5 with my current employer.
Definitely a bimodal distribution in my case. After grad school, 15 years, 1 year, 14 years and counting.