Job relocations are becoming a thing of the past (employees, 2014, interviewed)
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Is $1000 a month more really too much to pay for happiness?
The big thing the lower house payment has done for me is allow for flexibility for life's financial gotchas.
I'm sitting here at a car dealership right now. My car's instrument panel lit up like a Christmas tree Friday. The repair would normally have been $1,400 had I not had an extended warranty. Those big hits would me much harder to take if I was spending another $1,000/month on housing.
The previous car's engine blew up in May 2020. The low mortgage payment gave me the flexibility in the budget to get a new car.
With that said, I'm in a pretty decent financial position. I'm debt-free other than the house. I could also probably find in an in-office job that pays more if it came to that, but I'd rather remain remote at a lower salary.
Saw this article and thought I'd post it here. It's surprising to see how fast job relocations have fallen during the last 30-40 years https://www.challengergray.com/blog/...work-persists/. It used to be that almost 30% of people would relocate for a job back in the 80s. That has been trending downward, and has really smashed the basement in 2023 with only 1.6% of people relocating.
There's reason to expect that to continue or fall even further. The housing market is literally trapping people in place with mortgage golden handcuffs or pricing out any sort of newcomer who wants to be in anything besides an apartment, especially in "hot" markets. Salaries don't justify housing prices anymore, especially with the hits in the tech sector that were the high payers.
What I'm wondering is what this means for offices, the idea of HQ, and talent selection going forward? Nobody is going to move for a job post 2023, so how do companies get talent outside of just looking at who is nearby, especially as boomers retire out? Given that companies are getting larger and roles more specialized, I just don't see how anything besides a more distributed / remote setup would be the trend for the next 40 years.
This is a complex macroeconomic issue involving an interplay of housing policy (and culture), education policy and culture (how hard parents think it will be to find a good school for kids in a new area), general economic policy (especially pertaining to mortgage rates) as well as the various employer options and flexibilities (or lack thereof).
We are living in times when moving is very harshly punished by both mortgage rates and the school system (which expects parents to put everything else down in order to live in an area with good schools, because the system is so subpar in a lot of areas). General cost of living is also an issue - relocating for a job is FAR harder when you NEED two full-time incomes just to have housing, versus one income or even 1.5 (i.e. one fulltime and one parttime). It becomes a logistical nightmare trying to coordinate everything to avoid having one person out of work for several months.
And on top of that, many employers only give jobseekers 3 days to accept an offer - and this is simply not enough time to coordinate everything for a long-distance move and get one's ducks in a row especially when the household depends on two incomes. Employers are essentially putting prospective jobseekers in a near-impossible situation unless they can get by on one income. Moving companies are also taking advantage of this by charging a fortune and then adding more fees on top that were not disclosed at the beginning. They can get away with this because people who move for new jobs have zero PTO and likely depleted financial reserves, thus are not in a position to fight a legal battle with a moving company.
This problem won't be solved without some sort of change in either public policy or employer policies. Employers could give jobseekers more time to make a decision, or be more flexible with unpaid leave, or start off part-time for a few months in order to coordinate a move. Or federal policy could be tweaked to be less punitive (i.e. transferrable mortgages). Or, maybe at the individual level, people could be a bit less obsessed with home ownership. There's nothing wrong with owning a home, but American culture seems to encourage people to sacrifice just about everything else in order to get it. Sometimes it is actually better to rent, and certainly when it comes to coordinating logistics of a long-distance move, renting can provide a lot of extra flexibility.
So there are lots of potential solutions - but no one wants to negotiate or have difficult conversations. In the end, a lot of them will just continue with the "urban clustering" approach - tech jobs in the Bay Area, innovative startups in Seattle, financial firms in New York, etc. At least this creates locally specialized talent pools that can move from company to company without switching careers or making an interstate move. In a way, the existence of such local talent pools makes it less necessary for people to actually be able to move a lot. But the economy will always be dynamic, and sometimes career changes are needed.
This is a complex macroeconomic issue involving an interplay of housing policy (and culture), education policy and culture (how hard parents think it will be to find a good school for kids in a new area), general economic policy (especially pertaining to mortgage rates) as well as the various employer options and flexibilities (or lack thereof).
We are living in times when moving is very harshly punished by both mortgage rates and the school system (which expects parents to put everything else down in order to live in an area with good schools, because the system is so subpar in a lot of areas). General cost of living is also an issue - relocating for a job is FAR harder when you NEED two full-time incomes just to have housing, versus one income or even 1.5 (i.e. one fulltime and one parttime). It becomes a logistical nightmare trying to coordinate everything to avoid having one person out of work for several months.
And on top of that, many employers only give jobseekers 3 days to accept an offer - and this is simply not enough time to coordinate everything for a long-distance move and get one's ducks in a row especially when the household depends on two incomes. Employers are essentially putting prospective jobseekers in a near-impossible situation unless they can get by on one income. Moving companies are also taking advantage of this by charging a fortune and then adding more fees on top that were not disclosed at the beginning. They can get away with this because people who move for new jobs have zero PTO and likely depleted financial reserves, thus are not in a position to fight a legal battle with a moving company.
This problem won't be solved without some sort of change in either public policy or employer policies. Employers could give jobseekers more time to make a decision, or be more flexible with unpaid leave, or start off part-time for a few months in order to coordinate a move. Or federal policy could be tweaked to be less punitive (i.e. transferrable mortgages). Or, maybe at the individual level, people could be a bit less obsessed with home ownership. There's nothing wrong with owning a home, but American culture seems to encourage people to sacrifice just about everything else in order to get it. Sometimes it is actually better to rent, and certainly when it comes to coordinating logistics of a long-distance move, renting can provide a lot of extra flexibility.
So there are lots of potential solutions - but no one wants to negotiate or have difficult conversations. In the end, a lot of them will just continue with the "urban clustering" approach - tech jobs in the Bay Area, innovative startups in Seattle, financial firms in New York, etc. At least this creates locally specialized talent pools that can move from company to company without switching careers or making an interstate move. In a way, the existence of such local talent pools makes it less necessary for people to actually be able to move a lot. But the economy will always be dynamic, and sometimes career changes are needed.
Great post.
My girlfriend lives near Asheville, NC, and I work remotely for a local government in the area. Between us, we make about $170k a year. Her adult children (19 and 23) still live with her, but the older one is making $60k-$70k this year with overtime.
Realistically, she's not going to move without the kids. Who knows when or if they'd leave the area. Asheville is expensive, so that might make them move. If our jobs blew up, we probably couldn't make comparable money in the area. I love it there, but sometimes I miss a bigger city.
Having to find yourself a job can be difficulty. Timing two job hunts, a house sale, etc., makes everything much more complicated.
Life goes on. Circumstances change. People aren't going to hold out indefinitely.
I'd argue companies are going to cry uncle a LONG time before people do. Empty roles can only sit for so long and a few subpar candidates can change opinions quick. People are by and large sitting on a lot of cash now, so they can hold out for a while if they lose 1 position, and it's easier to get other ones. Only thing that would shift this would be some sort of Great recession 2.0 where workers lose all their leverage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff
If this data is correct then all the job seekers must be moving to Nashville, Atlanta, and Huntsville. Somebody is sure moving into those cities
One thing that wasn't captured was military workers. They are moved around a lot, and that's a lot of who's boosting places like Huntsville and Colorado Springs. People still may voluntarily move - though from what I saw in Atlanta, it was largely immigrants who were the ones moving to the new outer ring suburbs - immigrants aren't likely to go to small town america, whereas natives are much more likely to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncole1
This is a complex macroeconomic issue involving an interplay of housing policy (and culture), education policy and culture (how hard parents think it will be to find a good school for kids in a new area), general economic policy (especially pertaining to mortgage rates) as well as the various employer options and flexibilities (or lack thereof).
We are living in times when moving is very harshly punished by both mortgage rates and the school system (which expects parents to put everything else down in order to live in an area with good schools, because the system is so subpar in a lot of areas). General cost of living is also an issue - relocating for a job is FAR harder when you NEED two full-time incomes just to have housing, versus one income or even 1.5 (i.e. one fulltime and one parttime). It becomes a logistical nightmare trying to coordinate everything to avoid having one person out of work for several months.
And on top of that, many employers only give jobseekers 3 days to accept an offer - and this is simply not enough time to coordinate everything for a long-distance move and get one's ducks in a row especially when the household depends on two incomes. Employers are essentially putting prospective jobseekers in a near-impossible situation unless they can get by on one income. Moving companies are also taking advantage of this by charging a fortune and then adding more fees on top that were not disclosed at the beginning. They can get away with this because people who move for new jobs have zero PTO and likely depleted financial reserves, thus are not in a position to fight a legal battle with a moving company.
This problem won't be solved without some sort of change in either public policy or employer policies. Employers could give jobseekers more time to make a decision, or be more flexible with unpaid leave, or start off part-time for a few months in order to coordinate a move. Or federal policy could be tweaked to be less punitive (i.e. transferrable mortgages). Or, maybe at the individual level, people could be a bit less obsessed with home ownership. There's nothing wrong with owning a home, but American culture seems to encourage people to sacrifice just about everything else in order to get it. Sometimes it is actually better to rent, and certainly when it comes to coordinating logistics of a long-distance move, renting can provide a lot of extra flexibility.
So there are lots of potential solutions - but no one wants to negotiate or have difficult conversations. In the end, a lot of them will just continue with the "urban clustering" approach - tech jobs in the Bay Area, innovative startups in Seattle, financial firms in New York, etc. At least this creates locally specialized talent pools that can move from company to company without switching careers or making an interstate move. In a way, the existence of such local talent pools makes it less necessary for people to actually be able to move a lot. But the economy will always be dynamic, and sometimes career changes are needed.
Why is this something we should solution though? To me, going from 30% to 1.6% is a testament to better quality of life for workers, more stable relationships and less upheaval. The answer is companies need to figure this all out and learn how to acquire talent where the talent lives, all dispersed across the nation. People should live where they want to be, rather than being forced to move to where the paycheck is, especially when there's not a physical reason for it. Women in the workforce is a good thing, and that's one of the things that makes relocation harder. Mortgages suck, but that's already got a huge thread on the econ board .
If anything, the urban clustering seems to be going the other way. Most companies have like 8 offices where different departments reside across the nation anyways. And the people that go into the office are only there 20 hours a week anyways. A lot of the physical hardware of tech is moving to Ohio or Virginia or Phoenix. And a lot of people like myself latched on to remote work and scattered literally everywhere across the US.
I've been a part of a few hiring committees post-COVID, where candidates that we really liked and who got pretty far in the process decided that they weren't going to uproot themselves. It has to be a really unbelievable opportunity for people to want to move, and most jobs aren't that great.
And on the candidate side, the listings often specify where the candidate will live and no relocation assistance is offered.
Reading between the lines I take that to mean, "If you don't live in the specified area, we aren't going to consider you."
And just from a dollars and cents viewpoint, I have to imagine that there's no reason for most jobs to pay for a relocation. Think about it; something must be HIGHLY specialized to require that unless you're in a smaller regional city. Why would you pay for someone to relocate to Minneapolis or DC or Houston or Tampa?
Peoria IL or Fargo ND or Roanoke VA or Savannah GA or Ft Wayne Indiana, yeah, you might still need to.
I'd argue companies are going to cry uncle a LONG time before people do. Empty roles can only sit for so long and a few subpar candidates can change opinions quick. People are by and large sitting on a lot of cash now, so they can hold out for a while if they lose 1 position, and it's easier to get other ones. Only thing that would shift this would be some sort of Great recession 2.0 where workers lose all their leverage.
One thing that wasn't captured was military workers. They are moved around a lot, and that's a lot of who's boosting places like Huntsville and Colorado Springs. People still may voluntarily move - though from what I saw in Atlanta, it was largely immigrants who were the ones moving to the new outer ring suburbs - immigrants aren't likely to go to small town america, whereas natives are much more likely to.
Why is this something we should solution though? To me, going from 30% to 1.6% is a testament to better quality of life for workers, more stable relationships and less upheaval. The answer is companies need to figure this all out and learn how to acquire talent where the talent lives, all dispersed across the nation. People should live where they want to be, rather than being forced to move to where the paycheck is, especially when there's not a physical reason for it. Women in the workforce is a good thing, and that's one of the things that makes relocation harder. Mortgages suck, but that's already got a huge thread on the econ board .
If anything, the urban clustering seems to be going the other way. Most companies have like 8 offices where different departments reside across the nation anyways. And the people that go into the office are only there 20 hours a week anyways. A lot of the physical hardware of tech is moving to Ohio or Virginia or Phoenix. And a lot of people like myself latched on to remote work and scattered literally everywhere across the US.
There's a lot behind the scenes that isn't captured by these numbers, though. Some people may actually want to move if they can have a better opportunity, but are held back by housing or job logistics issues. It isn't "good" or "bad" across the board - it's a case by case thing.
Later on when you have broken up you will wish you had the house.
What house? My house here?
The big draw is that Hard Rock is building a major resort about two miles away. This property would be great for someone coming in for gambling, or as a short-term rental. It has a deck you can grill on, drive-under garage, a lot of space for a townhome, etc.
There's no long-term job creation here for anything but junk jobs. Not that many affluent people will move here because the area is lacking in amenities.
As long as I could buy in Asheville, or even Johnson City, TN, which is the premiere city in the area, I can't see how I would be doing anything but trading up.
i think one of the reasons there is less relocation, is that more and more people can work remotely. so......they don't have to move for the job. they can change jobs and stay where they are even if the job is somewhere else, because they can work remotely.
i think one of the reasons there is less relocation, is that more and more people can work remotely. so......they don't have to move for the job. they can change jobs and stay where they are even if the job is somewhere else, because they can work remotely.
Wouldn't this cut both ways though? If your spouse is working remotely, then it should be easier for you to relocate for a job, no?
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