The ideal retirement job that 50-plus-year-old workers envision for themselves is at odds with the experiences of those close behind them in age. But looming, major demographic shifts in the workforce may bring about the ideal, regardless.

Professionals 40 years old and over are being asked more than ever before to relocate, Atlas Van Lines’ has found. It is hardly the definition of "security and stability," key factors that, according to research from RetirementJobs.com, a majority of jobseekers just 10 years older than their forty-something counterparts consider to be part-and-parcel of an ideal retirement job.

Over the past two decades, the number of professionals age 40 or older asked to relocate by their employers has increased threefold, from a 1987 figure that had held around 12% since 1973, to 30% or more in 2007. Even among workers 45 years of age or older, about 20% are facing relocation in 2007, according to the online survey by Atlas of 390 professionals. It also found that employers are assuming transferees' relocation expenses at a falling rate, with barely more than 50% paying costs now versus 86% picking up the tab in 1977.

Contrast these trends with the ideals 50-plus-year-old jobseekers look for in employment at retirement age. Employers that force workers in their late forties to relocate may have trouble reconciling themselves with "security and stability," a factor that placed second in RetirementJobs.com's survey last year of 400 jobseekers 50 years old or over. Nearly 70% of the same jobseekers ranked "flexibility or lifestyle integration" as their top consideration in choosing an ideal retirement job.

But, despite the seemingly intractable differences in needs these studies suggest, the outlook for older professionals may yet be bright, and recruiters can prepare by anticipating the new incentives that will best woo this demographic. As the Baby Boomer workforce—all 130 million of them—transitions to semi-retirement, taking with them a vast base of professional knowledge, employers may find themselves catering to all sorts of alternative arrangements in their quest to retain skilled, quality talent.