U.S. Trends in Job Stability by Sex, Race, and Ethnicity from 1996 to 2020

Oct 15, 2026

Examining inequality in job stability across sex, race, and ethnicity, the study estimates expected job tenures as a demographic-style measure of job duration over biennial periods from 1996 to 2020. Racialized hiring disparities persist throughout the period, with white workers retaining an expected tenure advantage over black workers in every wave. Sex differences are small at hiring, yet a male advantage appears around the one-year mark. Hispanic workers show shifting advantages relative to non-Hispanics across time, indicating dynamic patterns of employment duration inequality.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Research question and approach

Expected job tenure as a measure

Patterns by sex

Patterns by race and ethnicity

Interpretation and implications

U.S. Trends in Job Stability by Sex, Race, and Ethnicity from 1996 to 2020 michael lachan ski How have inequalities in job stability evolved in the twenty-first century between demographic groups? I compute expectedjob tenures, akin to life expectancy in demographic research, for the population as a whole and by subgroups defined by selected ascribed characteristics (sex, race, and ethnicity) over biennial periods from 1996 to 2020. Racialized inequalities at hiring were the most persistent and large: white workers maintained an expected job tenure advantage at hiring relative to black workers in all periods. Inequalities in expectedjob tenure by sex were minimal at the time of hiring, but a male advantage emerges at the one-year mark in most periods. Hispanic workers maintained large advantages in expectedjob tenure relative to nonHispanic workers in some periods and small disadvantages in others. Keywords: labor markets, social inequality, job loss, job insecurity, employee tenure How has job stability by ascribed characteristics like sex, race, and ethnicity evolved overtime? Wages and duration are the key attributes of a job, but the considerable literature on wage inequalities in the U.S. private sector over the last three decades has been accompanied by only a handful of articles tackling the evolution of employment duration inequalities Michael Lachanski is a doctoral candidate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, United States. © 2025 Russell Sage Foundation. Lachanski, Michael. 2025. “U.S. Trends in Job Stability by Sex, Race, and Ethnicity from 1996 to 2020.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 11(1): 224–46. [https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2025.11.1.11. The author gratefully acknowledges funding from NIH T32 HD007242](https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2025.11.1.11. The author gratefully acknowledges funding from NIH T32 HD007242)[ ](https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2025.11.1.11. The author gratefully acknowledges funding from NIH T32 HD007242)[grant](grant), the Institute of Education Sciences under PR/Award \#3505B200035, IPUMS-INDIRA 2022, the International Max Planck Research School for Population Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS), and the 2023 Otto Pollak Fund while working on this research. This project would not have been possible without considerable guidance from Sam Preston. The author received helpful comments from Xi Song, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Irma Elo, Michel Guillot, David Neumark, Manuelita Ureta, Eugenio Paglino, Rehana Odendaal, Andres Villatoro, Joyce Kim, Wendy Roth, Herb Smith, Michael Cline, Emilio Parrado, Jonah Davids, Rebecca Johnson, Phyllis Moen, Julie Cai, Tim Riffe, Jennie Brand, Tom VanHeuvelen, Eddie Hunsinger, Fabio Rojas, Minjae Kim, Byungkyu Lee, Xavier St-Denis, Ivan Williams, Jose Monteiro Da Silva, Masoud Movahed, Bob Schoen, Michael Davis, Jere Behrman, Erlend Fleisje, and participants at the IPUMS NDIRA 2022 conference, the 2023 IMPRS-PHDS Annual Academy, the 2023 Russell Sage Foundation Conference on the 2020 Census, the 2023 ASA Annual Conference, and the Rationality and Society Committee of the ASA. Editors Zhenchao Qian and Trevon Logan gave detailed feedback that substantially improved the article. Jikai “Kyrie” Yang provided great research assistance. Three anonymous reviewers also gave helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. Direct correspondence to: Michael Lachanski, [at mikelach@sas.upenn.edu](at mikelach@sas.upenn.edu), Population Studies Center, 3718 Locust Walk, McNeil Building, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. u . s . t r e n d s i n jo b sta b i l i t y by s ex , r ac e, a n d et h n i c i t y 2 25 (Diebold, Neumark, and Polsky 1997, 206; Farber 2010; Hollister 2011; Holli

FAQs

How is job stability measured in the study?

Job stability is operationalized as expected job tenure, defined as the expected duration of jobs with a current employer.

What happens to racial gaps in job stability over time?

Racialized inequalities at hiring are described as the most persistent and large, with white workers maintaining an expected tenure advantage over black workers in all periods.

Do sex differences in job stability appear immediately at hiring?

Inequalities in expected job tenure by sex are minimal at hiring, but a male advantage emerges at the one-year mark in most periods.

Oct 15, 2026

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