Determinants of Current Job Tenure: a Cross Country Comparison

We consider differences in individual job tenure between Australia and Britain using linked data on employees and their workplaces. This linkage enables us to distinguish between the impact of demographic, education, job characteristics, occupation and work environment for the individual, as well as of the workplace in which they work. Whilst the various individual characteristics are, as a group, found to be essentially uncorrelated with the workplace effect, this is not true for women, part-time or non-white employees. We find that the lower tenure rates associated with membership of these groups is also captured by workplace effects suggesting some degree of labour market segmentation, especially so in Britain.