Generation Z has been deemed noncommittal when it comes to their careers, charged with leading the "Great Resignation" and "quietly quitting" rather than shooting for promotion. However, recent data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute suggests those attributions are unfair, according to Fortune.
New data analyzed by the publication revealed that from 1983 to 2022, the median tenure for salaried workers ages 25 and older has hovered at around five years. In 1983, workers stayed at their jobs 5.0 years, on average. In 2022, that number had only dropped to 4.9 years.
The change is equally insignificant in young workers. The median male worker in his 20s to mid-30s stayed at a job 3.2 years in 1983 compared to 2.9 years in 2022, while the median female worker in the same age brackets stayed 2.8 years in 1983 and 2.7 years in 2022.
Overall tenure was trending longer until 2020, when workers gained the upper hand in negotiations and began seeking out better opportunities than the ones they currently had, according to Fortune. But this had nothing to do with differences in generational values; people in their 20s and 30s have been switching jobs for years. Thus, Gen Z's perceived lack of company loyalty may be the result of unfair bias from older workers, the publication suggests.