Comment on Kenneth A. Swinnerton and Howard Wial, “Is Job Stability Declining in the U.S. Economy?”

Tnnumerable media reports over the past few years purport to find evidence of decliningjob stability in the U.S. economy. Of course, articles in the media do not necessarily provide evidence of actual trends in the economy, since they are not based on representative sampling. However, in a recent issue of this journal, Swinnerton and Wial (1995) claimed to find empirical evidence of declining job stability in the U.S. economy over the 1980s, based on representative samples from the tenure supplements to the Current Population Surveys. Averaging over all workers, they reported that the four-year retention rate, or the probability of remaining in ajob for four or more years, fell from .55 in 1983 to .49 in 1987. Although they acknowledged that firm conclusions cannot be drawn from two data points, Swinnerton and Wial