August 28, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Younger boomers: nearly 10 jobs by age 36

The average person born in the later years of the baby boom held 9.6 jobs from ages 18 to 36. These younger boomers, persons born from 1957 to 1964 and thus now aged 38 to 45, held 4.4 of those jobs while they were young adults (18 to 22).

[Chart data—TXT]

Differences in the number of jobs held are apparent between race and ethnic groups. From age 18 to age 36, whites held more jobs (9.8) than either blacks (9.1) or Hispanics (8.9). The difference is most pronounced at younger ages; whites held 4.6 jobs from ages 18 to 22, compared with 3.6 jobs for blacks and 4.0 jobs for Hispanics. 

On average, men held 9.9 jobs and women held 9.3 jobs from age 18 to age 36.

The estimates in this release were obtained using data from the first 19 rounds of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79).  The NLSY79 is a nationally representative sample of 12,686 young men and women who were 14 to 22 years of age when first surveyed in 1979.  For more information see "Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Among Younger Baby Boomers: Results from More Than Two Decades of a Longitudinal Survey," news release USDL 02-497.