Four years after graduating from Yale, only one-fourth of alumni tend to stay at the job they received immediately after graduation, a second Four-Year Look report from the Office of Career Strategy shows.

The report compares data from the First Destination report — which surveys class of 2014 graduates directly after graduation — with data collected from the graduates four years after leaving Yale. The OCS started publishing these reports last year, since the class of 2013 was the first to be surveyed as part of the First Destination report series. This year’s report analyzed data from 1,026 graduates from the class of 2014.

The Four-Year Look compares graduates’ initial and current living destinations, employer data and happiness levels, among other statistics. The goal of the report is to gather longitudinal data on graduates’ choices to correspond with graduates’ qualitative responses to survey questions, said Office of Career Strategy Director Jeanine Dames.

“I often say to people who ask about our recent graduates: They are working hard, they are making good money, they are mobile and they are very happy,” Dames said, summarizing the data. “What more could you want?”

The study found that 97 percent of the class of 2014 was at least somewhat satisfied with their current employment. Almost one-third of the alumni have only been with their current employer for less than a year, around 40 percent for one to three years and roughly 26 percent for more than three years. Dames attributed the high number of alumni switching jobs postgraduation to a “good job market” that allows for easy mobility between careers.

Seventy percent of graduates reported on average working for more than 40 hours a week. The industries with the highest number of work hours were technology, financial services and education. But those same three industries also had the highest percentage of satisfied employees, according to Dames.

The report showed that graduates’ top four foreign destinations right out of college were the United Kingdom, China, France and India. But four years out, France and India were replaced by Canada and Kenya. Dames said that she was surprised by the number of graduates who moved to Kenya and reached out to them separately to figure out why the number was so high. She said that she found no overarching reason why graduates choose to work there, although most of them were participating in entrepreneurial or business ventures in Nairobi.

According to the report, consulting saw the biggest decrease in alumni participation industry-wise — 11 percent of graduates worked in the field right after graduation, compared with just 6.7 percent currently. Technology and entertainment, on the other hand, gained the most alumni — tech moved from employing 9.8 percent of 2014 graduates to 18.6 percent, and entertainment moved from 1.9 percent to 7.4 percent. Dames pointed out that these upward trends correlate with an increase in the number of alumni living in California between 2014 and 2018 by 1.5 times.

Rich Silverstein ’02, an actor and tutor in New York City, said that a few years after graduation, alumni often find new interests to explore. He added that he was surprised that the survey only tracks the four years after graduation because so much changes in the lives of alumni after those initial four years.

Dames said she would be interested in expanding the time frame studied, and, eventually, she hopes to have data comparing alumni outcomes eight and 10 years after college.

Jeanine Dames assumed the role of OCS director in 2013.

Skakel McCooey | skakel.mccooey@yale.edu .