Expatriate Partner Employment

The Permits Foundation recently released an extensive survey that has confirmed a correlation between the expatriate’s partner’s employment abroad and the status of the international assignment. It’s unique because this has never been addressed on such a large scale, despite being a famous yet problematic conundrum of relocation.

Basically, when the partner does not work, the expat is less successful, for various reasons. This effect implicitly affects the attractiveness of certain locations for relocation, based on the ease of gaining a work permit and a job for the partner. Furthermore, the survey finds most partners to be educated, with 76% holding Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degrees, making their unemployment a waste of talent. If gainfully employed, partners would be effectively placed in the same category as the expat, with all cultural obstacles to integration applied, making the experience shared on another vital level (avoiding the “trailing spouse” situation).