A Hand-Raiser Surge? What New Data Says About Employee Appetite to Move Abroad

For the past several years, global mobility leaders have been quietly watching a tension build: employees said they were open to moving, but the numbers rarely showed up in corporate relocation pipelines. Our own research suggested the mood was essentially flat — and now a new external data point may explain why that's about to change.

Preply's Language and Global Career Mobility Report 2026 found that 81% of workers globally say they are more likely to relocate abroad than they were two years ago — with UK workers even higher at 87%. Rising living costs and concerns about quality of life were the biggest triggers behind the increased willingness to move, and the survey found that 40% of respondents believed their home economy was weakening. Job insecurity also featured strongly, with 44% reporting job loss either personally or through someone close to them.

That's a striking number. And it sits in interesting tension with what we found in Plus's 2026 Global Mobility Trends & Insights Survey, fielded in Q1 2026.

When we asked global mobility leaders how employees were responding to relocation opportunities, the majority (54%) said employee sentiment appeared unchanged from the prior year. Another 20% expected to see an increase in self-initiated relocations, the so-called "hand-raisers" who proactively pursue opportunities abroad. There was also a clear signal that employees were more interested in short-term assignments than permanent relocations.

So which picture is accurate? Arguably, both.

Here's what may reconcile the gap: the motivation to move and the act of moving are two very different things. Employee appetite — especially the kind driven by economic anxiety and quality-of-life concerns — doesn't automatically translate into corporate relocation activity. Workers may be increasingly open to the idea of living and working abroad, but that openness only becomes visible in a mobility program when it's matched with opportunity, employer support, and a destination worth the disruption.

The Preply data also offers a generational note worth watching. Gen Z respondents reported the strongest intent to move abroad, with 26% actively considering relocating to another country and 38% already speaking another language.  This cohort is entering the workforce — and the pipeline — at a moment when geopolitical volatility, housing unaffordability, and a shifting U.S. immigration landscape are all pushing the question of "where should I build my life?" into sharper relief.

The current global environment adds further fuel. The U.S.-Iran conflict and its ripple effects on business travel and assignment risk, immigration policy uncertainty on multiple continents, and ongoing cost-of-living pressures in major talent markets are all reshaping how employees think about location. For some, those forces are making familiar markets feel less stable. For others, they're opening the aperture to destinations they might not have considered before.

This has real implications for mobility programs. If the 20% of global mobility leaders who anticipated increased self-initiated relocations are right — and the Preply data suggests the appetite is there to support it — the coming months may bring a meaningful uptick in hand-raisers. Companies that aren't prepared to respond to employee interest with clear policy, defined short-term assignment frameworks, and destination support will miss the window.

The mobility function has long been reactive by design: move people when the business decides to move them. But when 81% of workers are saying they're more open to going somewhere new than they were two years ago, the question for GM leaders becomes less about whether demand is coming and more about whether their programs are ready to meet it.