The length of new employment relationships is of first‐order importance for a number of questions in recent macro‐labour research. We investigate it using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation for the US from 1996 onwards, and document that above two‐fifths of newly employed workers fall into non‐employment within a year. We also find that the transition rate from employment to non‐employment within the first year varies significantly for different groups of the population, increases with the duration of the previous non‐employment spell, exhibits an acyclical or weakly procyclical pattern and a much higher volatility than the unemployment rate.