Among the findings:

Job hopping is less frequent. The average churn rate for all non-farm occupations in the years before the recession (2003-2006) was 85.6 percent. In 2013, the national churn rate stood at 68.1 percent.
The churn rate has fallen in every major occupational group over the last decade.
Churn rates, of course, vary by vocation. In 2013, architecture and engineering jobs (44.8 percent) and legal occupations (45.1 percent) had the lowest average annual churn rates. At the other end of the spectrum, food preparation and service-related gigs (109.4 percent) and construction and extraction jobs (98.3) had the highest churn rates.
Although no employment demographic has fully recovered from the recession, production occupations and the category including arts, design, entertainment, sports and media occupations saw the strongest rebound in churn rates, each regaining 35 percent of their declines.
Low-wage jobs tend to have the highest rates of annual churn. Nuclear power plant operators had an average annual churn rate of 22.5 percent from 2010 to 2013. Median hourly earnings for this occupation are $37.67 per hour. Meanwhile, fast-food cooks, who make $8.88 per hour, had an average churn rate of 113.3 percent.
Churn rates of IT positions recovered significantly faster. For example, the churn rate of Web developers in the San Jose, California, metro grew from 47 percent in 2003 to 93 percent in 2013.

"Through 2013, churn rates in most occupations had not yet recovered significantly," Ferguson said, "but we expect that to change as workers gain confidence in a labor market that continues to improve and expand."

Instant Insights /

Research shows employee churn patterns

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