First, there are the all-important family ties; as Atlas discovered, this is the top reason why relocation offers are refused. We found older workers anchored in place by a broad range of familial commitments, including to adult children and grandchildren, as well as to aging siblings and parents.
There was also the issue of spouses and partners who were embedded in their own careers and understandably reluctant to leave after becoming the sole breadwinner. Sometimes they simply had their own preferences about where they would (and would not) live. These constraints, we learned, are non-negotiable.
Second, Atlas reports that a sizable number of relocation offers were rejected due to high mortgage interest rates and a tight housing market. Economic conditions were a similarly important consideration for our interviewees who lost their jobs in and around the 2008 Great Recession. The collapsing housing market accompanying this crash significantly reduced the value of our interviewees’ nest eggs at a time when they were already financially taxed.
A third factor is surprisingly overlooked, both in the Atlas survey and by our fellow scholars. Generationally, our interviewees are baby boomers who entered the workforce in an era when continued employment was often guaranteed for loyal white-collar employees. Their late-career job loss instilled an understanding that relocation cannot safeguard against the layoffs that today’s white-collar workers routinely encounter. Age and experience, then, afforded our interviewees the wisdom to understand the personal and financial sacrifices of relocating at their late career stage. With relatively few years to recoup any potential losses, moving was simply too risky a gamble.
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