The evolution of job tenure in transition economies

Abstract

This paper uses labour force survey data to analyse the dynamics of job tenure in seven transition economies of Europe and a comparator country (Türkiye) for an average 13 years per country during the period 1994–2020. The country-specific age-period-cohort decomposition demonstrates that the job tenure of the cohort of workers entering the labour market in the 2000s is 4–9 years shorter than that of workers who started working in the 1970s. This difference is at least twice as large as the difference in job tenure observed among workers from the same cohorts in European Union countries. These trends in tenure persist after accounting for changes in cohort composition, but they are significantly attenuated by controlling for differences in individual worker characteristics. These results suggest that the evolution of tenure in the transition economies of Europe may still be driven by the transition-induced structural change processes in the labour market.