7 ms·

Fewer Americans Choose to Move to New Pastures

41 points by SeanBoocock 10y ago

jordanb 10y ago
I wonder how much of this is companies getting stingier with relocation expenses. Even in tech, companies which claim to be begging for more talent tend to offer either no relocation benefits or really kinda insulting benefits ("$5000 max reimbursable with receipts, and you have to pay it back if you are separated within a year" for instance). How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? Especially when job switching is so risky these days. I know a woman who relocated herself to SV to work for a startup and then was terminated a few months later after the startup shifted priorities and eliminated her position.
- BuckRogers 10y ago
  >How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? I've done this, twice. But only because I really needed a job. Now that we're settled, it won't happen again so easily. One time I did it with a job already locked-in. Second time for my wife with no job locked in but it did work out well. Once we're settled in our locale, it will take a great deal to get us to move again. Someone would have to be offered a lot of money and the other person have some sort of opportunity available. Eg. my wife is a teacher, we'd need it to be a state where they had reciprocity. The fact that we need to move like cattle and have such lax labor laws to be let go with no cause are not really conducive to each other. Like what happened to your friend. Hard to imagine they truly couldn't find her some other job to do within the company when they "shifted priorities". I say this as someone who is never a victim of circumstance, we are those who within reason, move or do whatever it takes to get ahead. So we moved but we've both also given up all our friends, family and the comfort those bring. But it remains that American work culture and labor laws are completely upside down and they need to change.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  American history is one of large migrations of people to where the jobs are. The quantity and kinds of jobs available in any location never were static.
- jupiter90000 10y ago
  Not sure how many could really cover it, but my wife and I did just that a few years ago. No jobs lined up and a few k in the bank account, some from selling what little we owned. It was a great decision for us and has worked out well. We both were in the social work profession, so were by no means rich. Maybe we're not a typical story, not sure, but it can be done successfully. Taking healthy risks is an exciting part of life sometimes, and I am glad I didn't listen to my own fears or to others who said we would fail.
xyzzy4 10y ago
If you can't even 2x your income by moving somewhere, then there isn't much point. For example, moving from Africa to the US could be much more beneficial than moving from one part of the US to another.
- refurb 10y ago
  If you can't find a job in your current location, but can find one when moving, then the increase is infinity. There is a lot to be said for being flexible when it comes to relocation. If I had never left the town I was born in I'd probably be making 1/4th of what I make now.
- dionidium 10y ago
  Interestingly, I think a lot of people would benefit from moving to places where they'd earn less. The high cost of housing in places like California far outpaces the increase in wages when compared to the Midwest. If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and come out ahead in lifestyle. Do you want to spend the next 20 years complaining about the high costs of real estate or would you rather move somewhere that you can own today? How important to you is that sunny weather?
  - bsder 10y ago
    > If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and come out ahead in lifestyle. IF The problem is that most people in tech understand that your job in gone in 5 years, 10 years at the outside. Given that I need 4 jobs over my lifetime (at least), I'm going to stay where I can get my next job even if that area is expensive. If I find a good job in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, what happens when that job goes away? Now I have to move to San Jose, Austin, Boston anyway AND I'm going to have a difficult time because my family is used to that big house and yard in the suburbs, but I didn't put enough money away fast enough to make the jump to the more expensive area because my salary was 30% less.
    - 10y ago
bkjelden 10y ago
Related article that I found quite surprising: The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-fa...
furtive808 10y ago
I feel that remote workers and telecomuting could account for some of the decrease. When jobs dried up in my town the tech savvy people got work 100km away in the nearest city but never changed addresses. You couldn't have done that 20 years ago.
fiatmoney 10y ago
Two-earner households, and a society that makes a two-earner household a prerequisite for a middle-class lifestyle, makes relocation inherently more difficult.
- cheriot 10y ago
  Another problem that can be solved by putting women back in the kitchen? </sarcasm> Is there a case for preferring one-earner households? The bar for a middle class lifestyle going up is a problem, but I'm not sure it's the same problem.
  - keithnoizu 10y ago
    Has the bar gone up? http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Real-Median-Household-Income-Growth http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Real-Media...
    - cheriot 10y ago
      I've not seen that series before. Thanks! I do think the bar has gone up. The price of healthcare, housing, and educating one's children has increased at faster rates than inflation. Since the base unit is the household, instead of the individual, I suspect it doesn't account for how many women have joined the workforce since 1967. There's a number of interesting factors going on with workforce participation in that time period: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 (can't link directly, but there are chart options on the page). I can't find a series for changes in hours worked. I'd also love to discover a measure of job stability, which seems to be part of the "traditional" definition of middle class.
  - fiatmoney 10y ago
    Yes, there is. Elizabeth Warren, when she was an academic, did a fair amount of work indicating most of the marginal gain from the second earner goes to positional goods (like real estate in "good school districts" (ie areas with good demographics)) to no net gain. It also, as I said above, makes coordination more difficult. Two-earner households also result in delayed fertility, which has harmful demographic effects and dysgenic effects.
BrainInAJar 10y ago
If workers are terrified of changing, employer-linked healthcare is probably a big part of that.
- aklemm 10y ago
  I would love to see the dynamism that would spring from decoupling health insurance plans and employment.
  - BuckRogers 10y ago
    I agree but you wouldn't get that far to see. You'd just hear absolute brain-piercing screams about 'socialism' until that plan was stopped.
    - Kerrick 10y ago
      Nothing about decoupling health insurance and employment says it has to be nationalized. It could be like car or home or life insurance, where you buy your own without your employer's input.
      - BuckRogers 10y ago
        It's probably too late for that idea to pan out. We already have that and it's a (overly expensive) mess. Some blame the gov't and regulations but I place the blame at the market[0]. Healthcare (and the military) is the biggest racket going on today for sure. I mean racket in the traditional term, gov't and private market collusion. Since the elderly and lower classes already have no-charge healthcare, we're already one foot in. May as well just expand Medicare for all to single-payer to those of us who work for a living. I think we need nationalized insurance and private market medicine. Nothing will be perfect but we can definitely do better. [0]http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/750pill-pharma-company-under-investigation-by-senate-for-price-gouging/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/750pill-pharma-compan...
  - WalterBright 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ericdykstra 10y ago
Maybe a higher portion of the population choosing to move is choosing somewhere outside of the US? Between cheap flights and better communication technology, moving from one coast to the other isn't so much more inconvenient than moving from the US to Europe, and it's definitely much more exciting.
- egjerlow 10y ago
  I'm not sure exactly how the rules work for US citizens,but typically a major inconvenience for non-EU citizens is getting work permits/visas. If this is trivial for US citizens I agree with you but if not I'd say that's a pretty big hurdle..
- vonkow 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure the kind of people who used to move from Akron to, say, Philedelphia for more opportunities before middle america's mobility and income were severely reduced by the march of progress can't quite afford to move to London in hopes of finding a better life these days.
  - clevernickname 10y ago
    To add to this, in the past it may have been worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of opportunity." That doesn't imply in any way that today it is worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of less job opportunities but lower rent" on a whim. The only people that can really exploit this are tech workers that can telecommute and pocket the difference between western salaries and expat cost of living, and that's not really "finding a new life" so much as it is maximizing an already disproportionally good life situation.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  Most folks don't even have passports, let alone money to support themselves while looking for a job. Many countries will require that you know the local language or take classes (and you might have to pay for those classes). There are usually requirements for money in the bank to supoprt yourself and your family. Here (Norway), you need to apply for immigration for each family member. Your family member may or may not have the right to work in the new country. Many have restrictions that you need to be a skilled worker and/or have a pre-existing job offer. Shipping your belongings overseas is expensive - I gave most of my stuff away, though my situation was marriage instead of job-based so I had a household waiting. Others don't have this. You still might need to pay for health insurance even though most have universal insurance. Tax returns are more of a nightmare. It takes a fair amount of planning and money to do such things, and if it all fails, or you lose your job - you just wind up back in the states. Folks from the EU can live and work in other EU countries without these sorts of restrictions and without so much formal paperwork from the employer.
hugh4 10y ago
Or is this a good thing? I mean, I know it's de rigeur in journalistic circles to assume that any new trend must be a terrible one, but... if people are happy, and able to find jobs, without needing to move, this is a pretty good thing, right?
jmadsen 10y ago
This is what shoots down the biggest myth of the "pure capitalism" crowd. They have a habit of presenting complicated economics in "Lemonade Stand" simplistic terms. "Labor will move to where they can make the most money, until equilibrium is achieved". If your job moves to China, you can't move your family to China. The same restrictions apply at less restrictive levels for anywhere else. The fact is, labor has never moved freely, and so any model built on that argument is inherently false.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Yes. Capital moves freely. Labor often cannot.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  Only if you assume that the free movement of labour is impossible; capitalists like myself argue that it's an entirely achievable goal. After all, we've achieved relatively free movement of capital. The issue is that there are strongly entrenched powerful interests operating against free labour movement. Sadly, those people and organisations are themselves labelled as capitalists (sometimes, self-described).
  - bluetomcat 10y ago
    Capital movement is driven by profit, often without any regard for the consequences it brings to local communities. Relocation of working-class families across the world isn't as easy as it is for a Hollywood star or a venture capitalist with fat bank accounts.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      Yes. But it used to be; many early Americans were poor economic refugees. What's changed?
      - notahacker 10y ago
        Poor American families that might benefit from relocation generally aren't homeless. There aren't plots of unoccupied land in frontier territory to build shacks on, and they're not permitted to cram into boarding houses with five other families if they can't afford to rent a room in their destination city whilst looking for work there. The developed world has also taken a lot of steps to prevent more economic refugees arriving in the country.
tzs 10y ago
OT: in the photo of a late 19th century wagon train heading west there are several people who are walking. Anyone happen to know why they would not be riding the wagons? Are the wagons so loaded at the start that the weight of passengers would be too much for the horses and so some walk until enough supplies are consumed to lighten the load?
- cheriot 10y ago
  Even riding in a vehicle with modern tires over terrain like that can become violently bumpy. I can't even imagine doing it with wooden wheels. If the wagon is going at a walking pace already, I'd have done that too.

41 points by SeanBoocock 10y ago

I wonder how much of this is companies getting stingier with relocation expenses. Even in tech, companies which claim to be begging for more talent tend to offer either no relocation benefits or really kinda insulting benefits ("$5000 max reimbursable with receipts, and you have to pay it back if you are separated within a year" for instance). How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? Especially when job switching is so risky these days. I know a woman who relocated herself to SV to work for a startup and then was terminated a few months later after the startup shifted priorities and eliminated her position.

BuckRogers 10y ago
>How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? I've done this, twice. But only because I really needed a job. Now that we're settled, it won't happen again so easily. One time I did it with a job already locked-in. Second time for my wife with no job locked in but it did work out well. Once we're settled in our locale, it will take a great deal to get us to move again. Someone would have to be offered a lot of money and the other person have some sort of opportunity available. Eg. my wife is a teacher, we'd need it to be a state where they had reciprocity. The fact that we need to move like cattle and have such lax labor laws to be let go with no cause are not really conducive to each other. Like what happened to your friend. Hard to imagine they truly couldn't find her some other job to do within the company when they "shifted priorities". I say this as someone who is never a victim of circumstance, we are those who within reason, move or do whatever it takes to get ahead. So we moved but we've both also given up all our friends, family and the comfort those bring. But it remains that American work culture and labor laws are completely upside down and they need to change.
WalterBright 10y ago
American history is one of large migrations of people to where the jobs are. The quantity and kinds of jobs available in any location never were static.
jupiter90000 10y ago
Not sure how many could really cover it, but my wife and I did just that a few years ago. No jobs lined up and a few k in the bank account, some from selling what little we owned. It was a great decision for us and has worked out well. We both were in the social work profession, so were by no means rich. Maybe we're not a typical story, not sure, but it can be done successfully. Taking healthy risks is an exciting part of life sometimes, and I am glad I didn't listen to my own fears or to others who said we would fail.

xyzzy4 10y ago

If you can't even 2x your income by moving somewhere, then there isn't much point. For example, moving from Africa to the US could be much more beneficial than moving from one part of the US to another.

refurb 10y ago
If you can't find a job in your current location, but can find one when moving, then the increase is infinity. There is a lot to be said for being flexible when it comes to relocation. If I had never left the town I was born in I'd probably be making 1/4th of what I make now.
dionidium 10y ago
Interestingly, I think a lot of people would benefit from moving to places where they'd earn less. The high cost of housing in places like California far outpaces the increase in wages when compared to the Midwest. If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and come out ahead in lifestyle. Do you want to spend the next 20 years complaining about the high costs of real estate or would you rather move somewhere that you can own today? How important to you is that sunny weather?
- bsder 10y ago
  > If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and come out ahead in lifestyle. IF The problem is that most people in tech understand that your job in gone in 5 years, 10 years at the outside. Given that I need 4 jobs over my lifetime (at least), I'm going to stay where I can get my next job even if that area is expensive. If I find a good job in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, what happens when that job goes away? Now I have to move to San Jose, Austin, Boston anyway AND I'm going to have a difficult time because my family is used to that big house and yard in the suburbs, but I didn't put enough money away fast enough to make the jump to the more expensive area because my salary was 30% less.
  - 10y ago

bkjelden 10y ago

Related article that I found quite surprising: The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-fa...

furtive808 10y ago

I feel that remote workers and telecomuting could account for some of the decrease. When jobs dried up in my town the tech savvy people got work 100km away in the nearest city but never changed addresses. You couldn't have done that 20 years ago.

fiatmoney 10y ago

Two-earner households, and a society that makes a two-earner household a prerequisite for a middle-class lifestyle, makes relocation inherently more difficult.

cheriot 10y ago
Another problem that can be solved by putting women back in the kitchen? </sarcasm> Is there a case for preferring one-earner households? The bar for a middle class lifestyle going up is a problem, but I'm not sure it's the same problem.
- keithnoizu 10y ago
  Has the bar gone up? http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Real-Median-Household-Income-Growth http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Real-Media...
  - cheriot 10y ago
    I've not seen that series before. Thanks! I do think the bar has gone up. The price of healthcare, housing, and educating one's children has increased at faster rates than inflation. Since the base unit is the household, instead of the individual, I suspect it doesn't account for how many women have joined the workforce since 1967. There's a number of interesting factors going on with workforce participation in that time period: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 (can't link directly, but there are chart options on the page). I can't find a series for changes in hours worked. I'd also love to discover a measure of job stability, which seems to be part of the "traditional" definition of middle class.
- fiatmoney 10y ago
  Yes, there is. Elizabeth Warren, when she was an academic, did a fair amount of work indicating most of the marginal gain from the second earner goes to positional goods (like real estate in "good school districts" (ie areas with good demographics)) to no net gain. It also, as I said above, makes coordination more difficult. Two-earner households also result in delayed fertility, which has harmful demographic effects and dysgenic effects.

BrainInAJar 10y ago

If workers are terrified of changing, employer-linked healthcare is probably a big part of that.

aklemm 10y ago
I would love to see the dynamism that would spring from decoupling health insurance plans and employment.
- BuckRogers 10y ago
  I agree but you wouldn't get that far to see. You'd just hear absolute brain-piercing screams about 'socialism' until that plan was stopped.
  - Kerrick 10y ago
    Nothing about decoupling health insurance and employment says it has to be nationalized. It could be like car or home or life insurance, where you buy your own without your employer's input.
    - BuckRogers 10y ago
      It's probably too late for that idea to pan out. We already have that and it's a (overly expensive) mess. Some blame the gov't and regulations but I place the blame at the market[0]. Healthcare (and the military) is the biggest racket going on today for sure. I mean racket in the traditional term, gov't and private market collusion. Since the elderly and lower classes already have no-charge healthcare, we're already one foot in. May as well just expand Medicare for all to single-payer to those of us who work for a living. I think we need nationalized insurance and private market medicine. Nothing will be perfect but we can definitely do better. [0]http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/750pill-pharma-company-under-investigation-by-senate-for-price-gouging/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/750pill-pharma-compan...
- WalterBright 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ericdykstra 10y ago

Maybe a higher portion of the population choosing to move is choosing somewhere outside of the US? Between cheap flights and better communication technology, moving from one coast to the other isn't so much more inconvenient than moving from the US to Europe, and it's definitely much more exciting.

egjerlow 10y ago
I'm not sure exactly how the rules work for US citizens,but typically a major inconvenience for non-EU citizens is getting work permits/visas. If this is trivial for US citizens I agree with you but if not I'd say that's a pretty big hurdle..
vonkow 10y ago
I'm pretty sure the kind of people who used to move from Akron to, say, Philedelphia for more opportunities before middle america's mobility and income were severely reduced by the march of progress can't quite afford to move to London in hopes of finding a better life these days.
- clevernickname 10y ago
  To add to this, in the past it may have been worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of opportunity." That doesn't imply in any way that today it is worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of less job opportunities but lower rent" on a whim. The only people that can really exploit this are tech workers that can telecommute and pocket the difference between western salaries and expat cost of living, and that's not really "finding a new life" so much as it is maximizing an already disproportionally good life situation.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
Most folks don't even have passports, let alone money to support themselves while looking for a job. Many countries will require that you know the local language or take classes (and you might have to pay for those classes). There are usually requirements for money in the bank to supoprt yourself and your family. Here (Norway), you need to apply for immigration for each family member. Your family member may or may not have the right to work in the new country. Many have restrictions that you need to be a skilled worker and/or have a pre-existing job offer. Shipping your belongings overseas is expensive - I gave most of my stuff away, though my situation was marriage instead of job-based so I had a household waiting. Others don't have this. You still might need to pay for health insurance even though most have universal insurance. Tax returns are more of a nightmare. It takes a fair amount of planning and money to do such things, and if it all fails, or you lose your job - you just wind up back in the states. Folks from the EU can live and work in other EU countries without these sorts of restrictions and without so much formal paperwork from the employer.

hugh4 10y ago

Or is this a good thing? I mean, I know it's de rigeur in journalistic circles to assume that any new trend must be a terrible one, but... if people are happy, and able to find jobs, without needing to move, this is a pretty good thing, right?

jmadsen 10y ago

This is what shoots down the biggest myth of the "pure capitalism" crowd. They have a habit of presenting complicated economics in "Lemonade Stand" simplistic terms. "Labor will move to where they can make the most money, until equilibrium is achieved". If your job moves to China, you can't move your family to China. The same restrictions apply at less restrictive levels for anywhere else. The fact is, labor has never moved freely, and so any model built on that argument is inherently false.

hkmurakami 10y ago
Yes. Capital moves freely. Labor often cannot.
duncan_bayne 10y ago
Only if you assume that the free movement of labour is impossible; capitalists like myself argue that it's an entirely achievable goal. After all, we've achieved relatively free movement of capital. The issue is that there are strongly entrenched powerful interests operating against free labour movement. Sadly, those people and organisations are themselves labelled as capitalists (sometimes, self-described).
- bluetomcat 10y ago
  Capital movement is driven by profit, often without any regard for the consequences it brings to local communities. Relocation of working-class families across the world isn't as easy as it is for a Hollywood star or a venture capitalist with fat bank accounts.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    Yes. But it used to be; many early Americans were poor economic refugees. What's changed?
    - notahacker 10y ago
      Poor American families that might benefit from relocation generally aren't homeless. There aren't plots of unoccupied land in frontier territory to build shacks on, and they're not permitted to cram into boarding houses with five other families if they can't afford to rent a room in their destination city whilst looking for work there. The developed world has also taken a lot of steps to prevent more economic refugees arriving in the country.

tzs 10y ago

OT: in the photo of a late 19th century wagon train heading west there are several people who are walking. Anyone happen to know why they would not be riding the wagons? Are the wagons so loaded at the start that the weight of passengers would be too much for the horses and so some walk until enough supplies are consumed to lighten the load?

cheriot 10y ago
Even riding in a vehicle with modern tires over terrain like that can become violently bumpy. I can't even imagine doing it with wooden wheels. If the wagon is going at a walking pace already, I'd have done that too.