Job changes among older employees

The purpose of this report is to describe job changes among older employees. In addition to comparing different groups of older employees, we also compare older with younger employees. The analysis is based on the registers for the register-based employment statistics which provide information about active jobs in the 3rd week of November each year. These data make it possible to follow the same persons over time. Job changes are measured as changes in a persons job between the 3rd week of November one year compared with the same period the following year. This means that even if a person has changed jobs several times during a year, it will in this context only be registered as one job change. We have defined job changes in two different ways, when a person goes from one enterprise to another, and when a person goes from one establishment to another. The difference between the two definitions only applies in cases with multi-establishment enterprises.

The results show, as expected, that the share of persons who change jobs, both between establishments and between enterprises, decreases with age. Of persons aged 50 to 54 years, approximately 10 per cent changed establishment from 2011 to 2012. The share decreases to below 8 per cent for persons aged 55 to 61 years and 6 per cent for the age group 62 to 66 years. Of persons aged 35 to 49 years, who are used as a reference group in this report, nearly 14 per cent changed establishment from 2011 to 2012.

Job changes between enterprises will often imply a more pronounced change in the working situation, compared to job changes between establishments under the same employer. Since our definition of job changes between enterprises also requires that a person has changed establishment, the share of ”job changes between enterprises” is lower than the share of ”job changes between establishments”. For persons in the age groups 55 to 61 years and 62 to 66 years, the share of job changes between enterprises is about half the share of job changes between establishments. Job changes between enterprises show a slight increase over time for all age groups, particularly from 2010 to 2011.