The evolution of job stability in Canada: trends and comparisons with U.S. results

Using data from the 1976–2001 Canadian Labour Force Survey, we examine the stability of currently held jobs and find no period‐long drop in job stability. However, job stability declined across the 1980s and rose across the 1990s for workers with less than one year of tenure. When 1987 and 1995 are compared, it can be seen that job stability was steady in Canada but fell slightly in the United States, with the difference concentrated among medium tenured workers. We suggest that this difference was due to a slower recovery in Canada in the 1990s, which caused Canadian workers to be less mobile. JEL classification: J63