Separations by Firm Age: 0 to 1 vs 11+ Years (2024 to 2025)

The Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) are built from state unemployment insurance wage records linked to Census business data. They count jobs that start and end each quarter. Census defines a separation as follows: “A separation is indicated when a job is present in one quarter, but is not present in the following quarter.” Census also notes that “Voluntary separations (retirement, new job) and involuntary separations (layoff, firing) cannot be separately identified.” This article therefore says “separations,” not “quits” or “turnover.”

Firm age is a property of the whole firm, measured nationally. Census explains: “Firm age and size are defined at the national level, rather than the state level. A national firm may frequently be larger or older than the part of that firm found in any one state.” Firm age is reported for private-sector firms only.

Separation rates by firm age

Census defines the separation rate as “All separations as a percent of average employment,” where average employment is the average of jobs at the start and end of the quarter. Means of four quarterly rates, private sector, all industries, both sexes, all worker ages, not seasonally adjusted:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators, national files by firm age, release R2026Q3, downloaded October 3, 2026. The 2017 to 2019 column is the mean of 12 quarters. Hire rate is all hires as a percent of average employment.

Separation rates fall at each step of firm age in both periods, and all five were lower in the recent window than before the pandemic.

The registered comparison: firms aged 0 to 1 against firms aged 11 or more

The study set one comparison in advance: the separation rate at firms aged 0 to 1 year minus the rate at firms aged 11 or more, averaged over the latest four quarters, at or before 2025Q3, in which every value used had a QWI status of 1 or 6.

The difference was positive in all four quarters. Over the 12 quarters of 2017 to 2019 it averaged 17.3 percentage points. A pooled version, summing separations and average employment across the four quarters before dividing, gives 30.5% and 14.5%, the same 16.0-point difference.

QWI values are protected with noise. Census describes it this way: “all released data are ‘fuzzed.'” Every value carries a status flag, and this analysis used only values with status 1 (OK) or 6 (calculated from other released measures, no significant distortion). Census publishes no sampling error or other margin of error for QWI, and a covariance-aware interval for this difference is not available from the public tables. No statistical significance is claimed, and QWI values can be revised in later releases.

What the separation measure includes, and what it does not separate

A separation here is any job that ended, whatever the reason. When a firm closes, all of its jobs end, and those jobs are counted with quits and layoffs. QWI does not show how much of any firm-age class’s rate comes from closures. Firms aged 0 to 1 also had a higher hire rate than separation rate in the recent window: 41.4 hires and 30.5 separations per 100 jobs per quarter. The table does not adjust for industry, location or worker mix, so nothing in it says that firm age itself causes the difference.

The rate of separations from stable jobs, those that had lasted at least a full quarter, follows the same order: 13.5% at firms aged 0 to 1, 12.9% at 2 to 3, 12.4% at 4 to 5, 11.6% at 6 to 10, and 8.3% at 11 or more, in the recent window. The gap between the youngest and oldest firms is smaller on this measure: 5.2 percentage points, against 16.0 for all separations. The two rates use different denominators, so this comparison is descriptive and does not show how much of the all-jobs gap comes from jobs that never reached a full quarter.

What the numbers mean for an operator

These are descriptive aggregates for the stated federal-data population. They do not identify causal effects, diagnose an individual company, or estimate the result of adopting a practice. The guidance that follows is operating judgment, not a finding from the data.

A company aged 0 to 1 year is operating where, on average, almost a third of jobs end every quarter. Some of that is the company finding its shape, and some of it is cost: every job that ends early carries the cost of hiring, training and lost output, and young companies have the least slack to absorb it. The stable-job figures cannot show where the gap comes from, because the two rates use different denominators. As a matter of operating judgment, the first months of employment are still a practical place to start looking.

For an established firm, the useful number is not the national 14.5% but the firm’s own rate measured the same way. The national figure blends every industry and region.

How to handle it: protect the first ninety days

The steps below are an operating recommendation. This study did not test them, and the Census Bureau does not endorse them.

1. Measure separations the same way. Each quarter, count jobs that ended (for any reason) and divide by the average of headcount at the start and end of the quarter. Track jobs that ended within the first ninety days separately. In operating experience, that second number is often where a young company’s losses sit.

2. Write down the job before hiring for it. Early exits often come from a mismatch between what the role was described as and what it turned out to be. A one-page description of the outcomes expected in the first ninety days, agreed before the search, makes the hiring decision and the first review concrete.

3. Give every new hire an onboarding sequence. A written first-week plan, a named person to go to, and check-ins at thirty, sixty and ninety days. Young companies tend to skip this because they are busy, and that is when it matters most.

4. Separate the separations you chose from the ones you did not. Record whether each exit was the company’s decision or the employee’s, and the reason. QWI cannot make that distinction, but a company can, and the two call for different fixes.

5. Hire to a plan, not to a backlog. A young company that hires in bursts when work piles up, and lets people go when it slows, will show high separations whatever else it does. A twelve-month hiring plan tied to revenue is the operating answer to both.

What this data does not tell you

• It does not separate quits from layoffs or from jobs lost when firms close.
• It does not show why separation rates differ by firm age, or that any practice lowers them.
• Firm age is the age of the national firm, not of a local workplace, and not the worker’s age.
• QWI is noise-protected administrative data with no published sampling error, and values can be revised.
• It is a different source from the federal job openings and turnover survey, and this analysis does not compare its figures numerically with that survey.

Method

Already published by the agency: Census publishes QWI separation, hire and stable-separation rates by firm age every quarter. New here: four-quarter and pre-pandemic averages across all firm-age classes, the registered young-versus-established comparison quarter by quarter, and the stable-job comparison.

Source. U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators, national firm-age files (rates and counts), release R2026Q3, data through 2025Q3, downloaded October 3, 2026. Selection: private ownership, all industries, both sexes, all worker ages, not seasonally adjusted.

Window rule. The current window is the latest four quarters, at or before 2025Q3, in which every value used had a status of 1 (OK) or 6 (calculated from other released measures, no significant distortion). That was 2024Q3 to 2025Q2. Values with any other status are treated as missing, never as zero. The baseline is 2017Q1 to 2019Q4.

Protocol. The comparison, the window rule and the baseline were fixed in a dated protocol before any rate was computed. The protocol (wave 2 section, frozen October 4, 2026) and its dated amendments are at https://kamyarshah.com/public-data-protocol/

Check. All figures were recomputed from the raw files by a separately written program, built without access to this study’s results. As a second check, the same rates were rebuilt by adding up state-level counts for the 48 states and the District of Columbia that the Census data service returned for each of these quarters. Alaska and Michigan returned no data, so this is a partial check rather than a national reconstruction. The quarterly differences from that rebuild (16.4, 15.8, 16.0 and 15.4 points) agree with the national file to within 0.1 point.

The agencies did not review or endorse this analysis. Kamyar Shah sells fractional COO and CMO services.

Questions about this analysis can be sent through https://kamyarshah.com/contact/.

Kamyar Shah Fractional COO, Fractional CMO & Business Consultant

Fractional COO, Fractional CMO, and Executive Coach, Kamyar Shah, founder of World Consulting Group with over 25 years of experience helping organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth. He has led 650+ consulting engagements producing more than $300M+ in measurable results. Kamyar contributes regularly to KamyarShah.com and Coruzant.

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