It’s always a good time to think about your next job, since you’re probably leaving this one sooner than you think.

That’s because the average American worker seeks a new job every 5¹/₂ years or so, according to a new study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

In recent years the median length for all workers has ticked up as women are staying in jobs longer.

Job-tenure number for women “increased from 4.2 years in 1983 to 5.4 years in 2014,” according to the report. For men, meanwhile, tenure dropped from 6 years in 1983 to 5.5 today.

The low tenure figure does not surprise a hiring expert.

“When I began some 17 years ago, there was a stigma of changing jobs. Now that stigma is largely gone,” said Keith Feinberg, director at the professional-staffing service firm Robert Half in New York.

“People job-hop today,” he adds. “They are frequently looking for better jobs and it isn’t just money.”

Feinberg says his firm advises employers how to persuade employees to stay for longer periods. The low worker retention trend affects both males and females.

“Certainly the workforce has changed over the last 20 years. The males used to have much longer tenures than females, and now they have similar tenures,” says Craig Copeland, EBRI senior
research associate and the author of the report.

If you want job security, your chances are better in the public than in the private sector.

Private-sector median tenure was 4.3 years by the end of 2014. But public-sector work tenure was almost double that, 8 years, EBRI said.