Anchored women cut down transfers

Despite an increasingly mobile US workforce, job relocation among married working couples apparently is waning.

In a recent survey, 36 percent of jobless managers and executives with employed spouses relocated in the fourth quarter of 1999 - down from 54 percent in 1998. One reason: More married women are finding job success.

"It is going to be tougher to persuade women to leave their jobs simply because their jobless husband has an opportunity in another city," says John Challenger, chief executive officer of the firm that conducted the survey, Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

"In cases where the husband is suddenly jobless, women's increased earnings can sustain the household during a longer, local job search," Mr. Challenger says.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society