My grandfather did this -- chasing the dream at IBM and my father attended 6 different school districts growing up. They lived in mansions in downtown San Francisco and now he doesn't have a long term friend, because friendships and people are transient and you never know when you have to leave town for the next shiny nickle.
Fuck that.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has job tenure data back to 2014.[1] Down 16% over that period. I wonder if there's data going further back.
There is: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2024/median-tenure-with-current....
Job tenure now is higher than it was during the 1980's and 1990's.
On the first hand, if employees have shorter job tenure because they are switching jobs for better pay and opportunities is that "the wrong direction"? For employees it might not be, for employers it might be, for the economy in general? It depends.
And on the second hand, if employees have longer job tenure because they hate their jobs, but can't find new ones so can't quit, is that "the right direction"? For employers it might be, for employees it might not be, for the economy in general? It depends.
And, as an economist, on the third hand...
I think it's more like this: Housing is super overinflated. Either I own or I rent.
If I rent, it may have taken me several local moves to find a situation that is a tolerable combination of price and quality. If I move to a different city, I lose that situation, and I lose all applicable knowledge of how to find another decent one. I have to start over at "low quality and overpriced", and improve my way from there, with several moves along the way. That's a hard psychological pill to swallow.
If I own, moving means paying 6% real estate commission. If housing is extremely expensive, that becomes a big number - though I don't know if that's the critical dynamic in peoples' minds. It may be the same as the renter issue - quality plus a decent price are hard to find.
It's more expensive because that's where the jobs are.
Now both of those can be tragedies in their own way. In the 1970s there was a notorious upheaval in TV programming known as "The Rural Purge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge
Basically, a lot of TV series which were set in rural or pastoral settings, were outright canceled in favor of urban shows, including "fish out of water" fare such as The Beverly Hillbillies. And prime time TV has never been the same since then!
So it was inevitable that there have been waves of urbanization, and commensurate de-ruralization. As people got into STEM, they needed to get off the farm. If it was no longer possible to make a living on a ranch, then people needed to get into the cities. Including minorities such as Black Americans, who may find more opportunity on the fringes of society, and less discrimination or injustice, after a while anyway.
And there has been a streak of independence as well. American kids are raised to resent their parents and long for something else. Sometimes they don't know what that is, just that they can't find it at home. So an American kid, especially the boys, they're conditioned and poised to leave home as soon as they're 18. Go far away to college and stay away. Leave the nest behind and make it on your own [even if your family already lived in a nice big city.]
Even I was infected with this so-called "American Dream", and not realizing how good I had things at home, I wanted to get out of there, get far away, make it on my own, but I couldn't. I couldn't fend for myself and I crashed and burned; I hit rock bottom without my family's support. I never should have left in the first place, but now the deed is done.
In the 1950s the propaganda supported the "Nuclear Family" concept, and extended families started splintering. It's often not cool for parents to live with their married, adult children, or to have a large family house that fits everyone. The kids go away and they hole up in 1BR apartments alone, to fend for themselves independently, for better or worse. Women enter the workforce, willingly or unwillingly.
I would say at this point, that whoever has purchased a home and the land underneath it, they're done moving. Perhaps fewer are looking to purchase homes far away from where they already are. I myself decided I'd never relocate again, back in 1999, because it just wasn't worth it anymore, and also because I found myself in a really ideal location that offered no reasons to leave.
Source: the many times my spouse and I have done this exercise.
Abundance Starts with Mobility
How is it not even mentioned in the article?
By the way, studying geography in undergrad one of my favorite papers in this topic was "Sticky Places in Slippery Space" mostly because of the great title.
Markusen, A. (1996). Sticky Places in Slippery Space: A Typology of Industrial Districts. Economic Geography, 72(3), 293–313. https://doi.org/10.2307/144402
bediger4000•8mo ago
nine_k•8mo ago
(The amount of stuff remains large nevertheless.)