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The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will enable people to live in these smaller communities while having the increased income of the city. I h

The best thing about moving to remote work is that it will enable people to live in these smaller communities while having the increased income of the city. I hope this will bring more money back to local economies and revitalize rural areas.

ryandrake 5y ago
If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana? Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of Bay Area salaries is an open question.
- nawitus 5y ago
  Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-end.
vitaflo 5y ago
All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals. Remote workers also don’t fully contribute to the economy of the rural area because their place of employment is not in that area. If the company the remote worker works for does well and grows, that won’t grow the rural community.
- sigstoat 5y ago
  > All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it when you stop competing for the same strip of land, 10 miles from the pacific ocean, it turns out there's a sort of stupendous amount of land. while, yes, there will technically be some competition, in the areas under discussion i don't think it will meaningfully effect housing prices. (i could divide the amount of land in rural america by the number of possible work-from-home employees and we could figure out what it'll do to the average population density. but, hell, i've lived in these areas, i don't need to.)
  - an_opabinia 5y ago
    It’s pretty incomplete to figure that the coast or the weather are the reasons land is expensive in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
  - thomasmeeks 5y ago
    https://www.businessinsider.com/missoula-montana-residents-forced-out-real-estate-prices-skyrocket-2021-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/missoula-montana-residents-f...
    - gen220 5y ago
      Missoula is not really the rural part of America that the parent comment is talking about. While Missoula’s population “feels” small at 75k, it’s the second largest metropolitan area (110k-ish) in the state, which has a population of a million. I’ve been following news of this sort closely during COVID as a personal curiosity. Most of the affected towns are either (1) within 1-2 hour drive of a major metro center (e.g. northwestern CT) (2) already a major vacation destination prior to COVID (Jackson Hole, WY and friends) (3) a top-3 metro area in the state. If you check more than one box, the situation is more dramatic. Many of these places were already changing prior to COVID, but, as in other domains, COVID has accelerated an already latent process. Basically, Missoula’s example does not contradict their claim. But yes, remote workers are more likely to move to a place like Missoula than a place like Philipsburg, MT.
    - 5y ago

ryandrake 5y ago

If remote work really takes off, it won't be long until most employers adjust salaries down to each employee's local cost of labor. Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana?

barry-cotter 5y ago
> Why pay someone a Bay Area or NYC salary when they work in rural Montana, when they could pay a rural Montana salary to get someone who works in rural Montana? Because you can't get anyone in rural Montana who is capable of getting a job paying Bay Area or NYC salaroies to accept that offer. Adjustment will result in meeting somewhere in the middle but whether that's 25% or 95% of Bay Area salaries is an open question.
nawitus 5y ago
Remote salaries might end up being somewhere between rural Montana and Bay Area. There's no reason to assume there's a huge supply of software engineers in the US which would make all remote salaries to be in the low-end.

vitaflo 5y ago

All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it, driving out the locals. Remote workers also don’t fully contribute to the economy of the rural area because their place of employment is not in that area. If the company the remote worker works for does well and grows, that won’t grow the rural community.

sigstoat 5y ago
> All this will do is drive up the cost of housing as remote workers compete for it when you stop competing for the same strip of land, 10 miles from the pacific ocean, it turns out there's a sort of stupendous amount of land. while, yes, there will technically be some competition, in the areas under discussion i don't think it will meaningfully effect housing prices. (i could divide the amount of land in rural america by the number of possible work-from-home employees and we could figure out what it'll do to the average population density. but, hell, i've lived in these areas, i don't need to.)
- an_opabinia 5y ago
  It’s pretty incomplete to figure that the coast or the weather are the reasons land is expensive in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
- thomasmeeks 5y ago
  https://www.businessinsider.com/missoula-montana-residents-forced-out-real-estate-prices-skyrocket-2021-5?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/missoula-montana-residents-f...
  - gen220 5y ago
    Missoula is not really the rural part of America that the parent comment is talking about. While Missoula’s population “feels” small at 75k, it’s the second largest metropolitan area (110k-ish) in the state, which has a population of a million. I’ve been following news of this sort closely during COVID as a personal curiosity. Most of the affected towns are either (1) within 1-2 hour drive of a major metro center (e.g. northwestern CT) (2) already a major vacation destination prior to COVID (Jackson Hole, WY and friends) (3) a top-3 metro area in the state. If you check more than one box, the situation is more dramatic. Many of these places were already changing prior to COVID, but, as in other domains, COVID has accelerated an already latent process. Basically, Missoula’s example does not contradict their claim. But yes, remote workers are more likely to move to a place like Missoula than a place like Philipsburg, MT.
  - 5y ago