Artikel fra The Wall Street Journal, oktober 2024:
Who Matters More in a Move: You or Your Spouse?
Af Dalvin Brown
I oktober 2024 blev jeg interviewet af The Wall Street Journal til en artikel om det at flytte pga. et arbejde. Forskning viser, at par er mere tilbøjelige til at flytte, når det gavner manden.
Du kan læse hele artiklen nedenfor på engelsk eller finde den på The Wall Street Journals hjemmeside (kun abonnementsadgang).
Key points:
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Men's earnings increase 5%-10% after a move, while women's earnings tend to stagnate.
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Couples are more likely to relocate for a move that benefits the man's earnings, even if the woman's career would benefit more.
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Women who relocate for their partner's job often face a reduction in earnings, which can persist for years.
New research finds couples are more likely to move for a job when it benefits the man, even when the woman’s career stands to benefit more by moving.
Couples are moving again for better job opportunities. They are more likely to make those moves when the husband’s earnings stand to benefit.
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Men’s earnings increase 5% to 10% after a move, while women’s earnings tend to stagnate, according to a September study of opposite-sex couples led by economist Seema Jayachandran of Princeton University.
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The study finds that they are more likely to go through with it to improve the man’s earnings—even in cases when the woman’s career stands to benefit more by moving. The cooling job market makes the dinner-table deliberation over a move more challenging.
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“There’s some psychological pressure to be a supportive wife,” said Henriette Johnsen, who restarted her career after moving from Denmark to England for her husband’s finance job.
​​The relocation penalty for women is a rarely examined factor of why women’s earnings often lag behind men’s. While more women are working than ever before, some of what’s holding them back professionally comes from decisions made inside the household.
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“This imbalance is a hidden factor that keeps women from advancing as quickly as men in their careers,” Jayachandran said. “It’s rooted in household decisions rather than workplace bias.”
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Shanika Boyd had to take a $10,000 pay cut after moving from Northern Virginia to Miami for her husband’s new airline job. Though he nearly doubled his salary, she settled for a marketing job nearly identical to the one she had in Virginia. It wasn’t the win-win move she imagined.
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​Her career progress stalled, and after three years getting passed over for promotions, she moved back to Virginia with her son. “If I had stayed, my career wouldn’t have recovered,” she said.
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Her husband, who got free flights through work, commuted. She worked two jobs to gain experience that helped her make up for lost time, she said. He recently retired and moved back to Virginia.
​​Frequent moves​​
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Job relocations declined for years, and fell in particular during the pandemic when many people worked remotely. But the trend may be reversing. The share of job seekers relocating for new positions was up in the first two quarters of 2024 after hitting a record low last year, according to a survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm expects relocations to keep rising across all wage levels as fully remote work declines.
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The share of postings on jobs website Indeed that mention remote or hybrid terms peaked at 10.4% in early 2022 but has since declined to 7.8% at the end of September. Remote job postings in sectors like finance, education and government have been declining, according to ZipRecruiter.
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Some 26% of men and 15% of women who took new jobs said they were required to relocate, a ZipRecruiter survey from earlier this year found.
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In some industries, frequent moves are the norm. Military families often relocate every few years, which can disrupt the career of the nonmilitary spouse. ​
Kathryn Zahm, who worked in programs and services for older adults, saw her salary drop more than a third when relocating from Washington, D.C., to San Diego in 2015 for her husband’s military post.
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To remain competitive, she earned a professional certification and volunteered as a long-term care ombudsman, advocating for the rights and well-being of residents in nursing homes. The experience helped her secure a job with a significant raise when they later moved to Chicago. “I could say, ‘I’ve done this as a volunteer,’ and that gave me an edge,” she said.
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When the couple relocated again to San Diego in 2021, her Chicago employer allowed her to work remotely, she said. She and her family are now back in the Washington, D.C., area. It took her nearly five years to get back to her 2015 D.C. salary.
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“We always said we’d invest in his career until he could retire, and then focus on mine,” she added. He is eligible for retirement in four years.
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This pattern of losing ground on earnings is common for women, who more often relocate for their partner’s job, according to Jeremy Burke, a senior economist at the University of Southern California.
​His 2018 study on military families found that nonmilitary spouses typically face a 15% reduction in earnings after a move, with losses persisting for at least two years. The drop would likely be higher if the study included spouses who dropped out of the workforce entirely, he said.
Women earned 84 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2023, according to Labor Department data. That gap can be self-reinforcing in relocation decisions because couples often give priority to the partner with higher earnings potential or more immediate career opportunities.
