The number of CEO changes in American companies has reached a record high, and their ages are tending to be younger.

The turnover rate of CEOs in listed companies in the United States has reached a record high, with the largest number of new CEOs taking charge of large enterprises in years, and these new faces are younger and less experienced than ever before. A new analysis found that about one-ninth of the 1,500 largest publicly traded companies changed CEOs last year. This is the highest proportion at least since the United States emerged from the financial crisis in 2010. This rate of replacement does not seem to be slowing down. In January and early February of this year, dozens of companies welcomed new CEOs, including Walmart, Procter & Gamble, and Lululemon Athletica. In early February, Disney, PayPal, and HP all announced new CEO appointments; last week, Kroger appointed a former Walmart executive to lead the grocery store chain. The result is a major experiment about leadership, as today's companies strive to cope with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, the breakdown of long-standing trade conventions, and the volatile economic and geopolitical order. The report was written by the executive search firm Spencer Stuart. Spencer Stuart found that the new CEOs are younger and less experienced than the previous batches of new leaders. The average age of the new CEOs is 54, while the average age of appointees last year was close to 56. Of the 168 new CEOs last year, over 80% were first-time CEOs, with no prior experience managing publicly traded companies or other large independent enterprises. Two-thirds of them had never served on a company's board of directors before.