Results of Dual Career Couple Survey

Abstract

Talent & Technology One of the growing issues facing companies is managing employees who are part of a dual career couple. Traditionally, corporate policies were based on the assumption that even if one spouse worked, that person’s income would make up a relatively small fraction of the total household income. The spouse was assumed to be available to handle numerous house-hold responsibilities so the employee could focus on work. Much of the workforce is now juggling more complex personal logistics because both spouses are employed outside the home. One of the objectives of the SPE Talent Council is conducting surveys and statistical analysis to highlight potential capability/expertise gaps and to identify possible solutions. To obtain information on the prevalence of dual career couples and the challenges facing them, SPE emailed a survey in May to 46,777 professional members, of which 5,570 responded. The results showed that dual career couples make up about half the workforce. Dual career couples will probably form a larger proportion in the near future, because those in such relationships are younger than those who are not. This article is a summary of the survey results, which are available in SPE-151971-MS at www.onepetro.org. The largest number of survey responses, with similar percentages, came from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, where SPE has the largest number of members. Members in 93 countries responded. Of the total number of responses, 47% reported they were part of a dual career couple, 11% said they were previously part of a dual career couple, and 42% considered themselves to be single career. We also examined the results for two other groups. The first group was those in which the respondent said he or she is contributing between 33% and 67% of the household income, so that each partner is contributing at least a third. The second group was made up of those who reported contributing between 40% and 60% of household income. Of those who identified themselves as “dual career,” 47% said the lower-paid partner provides at least a third of the household income and 37% said that each partner provides nearly equal portions of the household income. Of all the survey responses, 22% came from couples where the minimum income contribution is a third and 17% came from those where the contribution is nearly equal. The days when the spouse’s salary could be viewed as providing an insignificant fraction of the household income that could easily be covered by a relocation bonus are gone.