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Shortly after turning 30, I was sent to Washington DC to be bureau chief of an Australian newspaper in conditions that today seem incredible.
The move was less impressive than it seems. The bureau consisted of just one staff member, me, and I was not the youngest foreign correspondent at the time.
But what was extraordinary by today’s standards was the magnificence of my expat benefits. My rent was generously subsidized. I had top-notch health insurance and allowances for a car, a telephone, newspapers and many other expenses. If I had had children, their school fees would have been paid as well.
Other expats I met had similar benefits, plus annual flights home for the entire family and money for things like accountants to deal with the Internal Revenue Service. Some received extra money to ensure that taxes taken abroad did not leave them worse off than if they had stayed at home.
These lavish deals haven’t completely disappeared, but corporate relocation experts tell me they are declining at many companies, and not just in the media industry.
I suspect this is one of the reasons I keep hearing about a curious development in the workplace: less interest in the idea of working abroad.
This was happening before the pandemic, when traditional packages designed for men and their non-working wives collided with the rise of professional women who sometimes earned more than their partners.
Expecting a two-income couple to halve their income and ruin their career in exchange for a reduced expatriation package always seemed problematic, especially if they were also asked to endure Delhi’s stifling air or Delhi’s crime rate. Tijuana.
But indifference towards international destinations seems to have intensified since the pandemic, to the surprise of some specialists.
“It’s a little shocking,” says Caitlin Pyett, a consultant at the Global corona mobility group that has been in the relocation business for almost 30 years.
He told me he first noticed the trend late last year, when clients in sectors ranging from renewable energy to medical technology said they were finding it harder to persuade staff to take overseas assignments.
This was unexpected at a time when the pandemic had triggered a burst of globe-trotting digital nomads, often in their twenties, who seemed to represent the future direction of work.
Pyett’s firm has begun conducting investigations to understand what is going on. In the meantime, he has theories, starting with the appeal of working from home that workers 40 and older discovered during lockdown.
“They’ve developed the sense that they can work just fine from the kitchen table, so why go back to an office, let alone get on a plane and go to the other side of the world?”
That sentiment may help explain why international assignments have changed at companies like Ingka, the largest owner of Ikea stores. The group still sends staff abroad with their families for some business-critical functions. But a spokeswoman told me that the rise in remote working, in addition to “dual career challenges,” has seen “a significant increase” in more flexible arrangements where staff travel or work on one-off projects in other countries.
There are other signs of a broader decline in the need to work away.
A recent global study A study of more than 150,000 workers by Boston Consulting Group showed that the proportion of people willing to move abroad for work fell from 78 percent in 2018 to 63 percent in 2023.
This could be because the world is becoming less open while work becomes more global, says co-author Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic.
By this he means that events such as Brexit and geopolitical conflicts have made it more difficult for people to physically move abroad, while the growth of flexible working has made it easier to stay. “Now you can work remotely in a better job without even having to move,” he says.
In other words, before the pandemic it was difficult to imagine that someone could gain much experience or benefit from working in China while based in Europe, but now that way of thinking has changed.
These explanations all make sense and I can understand why the well-padded expat allowance might be disappearing. But moving to a new country for work can still be a wonderful thing, both for life and career, as anyone lucky enough to be able to do so will surely discover.