Older, urban,long-tenured employees suffer more
Statistics Canada has found that the retention rate of employees in manufacturing industries has dropped sharply in the current recession. Fewer workers are employed by the same company that they were four years earlier, as a result of either layoff or quitting, than at almost any other point over the last three decades. Further, the sector of the economy in which they are employed, the age and the location of those employees are also having an impact on the tenure of their employment.
Historically, job retention rates fall during economic downturns because companies lay off staff. But, as the employees who remain gain more tenure and seniority, they are more likely to stay in the same job.
Sector also has an effect. Job retention in manufacturing is close to a 32-year low. In 2004, 57.8 per cent of all employees had the same job as they had four years earlier. In 2008, this had fallen to 56.0 per cent. In manufacturing, the 62.4 per cent rate in 2004 plummeted by 16 per cent to 52.5 per cent in 2008, leaving manufacturing employees 15 per cent less likely than other employees to remain in a job long-term. And this despite the fact that the jobs are more likely to be full-time and unionized.
As does age. Longer-tenure employees are historically more likely to remain in the same job than short-tenure ones (with the exception of 20-year and up employees who leave through retirement). In this recession, the biggest hit has been taken by 10-year to 19-year manufacturing employees with an average age of 45, who have seen their retention rate fall by 28 per cent between 1998 and 2008, more than any other age group. In absolute numbers, though, employees with less than two years of service are the least likely to be in the same job four years later, and their rate has also fallen.
Finally, manufacturing employees in large cities had an average retention rate of 46 per cent in 2008, compared to 50 per cent in non-metropolitan areas. Retention also began declining in 2000 in metropolitan areas, five years earlier than elsewhere, despite their more diversified economies.
The study also identified a 15 per cent longer period of unemployment for manufacturing than for non-manufacturing employees.
“Job stability and unemployment duration in manufacturing” by André Bernard was published in the November issue of Statistics Canada’s Perspectives, catalogue no. 75-001-X.
