Re: "employees who live closer to their jobs stay at these jobs longer"
I'm not even convinced that stupidity is the only answer. It's cost-cutting too.
Each user of this kind of data model does so because they believe that it represents the panacea of decision making. They give it the name "big data" because the actual name, generalisation, has far too many negative connotations to allow it to be used, then they wonder why the conclusions they arrive at don't always work. As often said, all generalisations have exceptions.
Actually, the way in which big data is used is worse than ordinary generalisations since it can often include layers of generalisations, one of which was mentioned in the article. But it's cheaper and easier to deal with data than it is to deal with people.