Half of America hasn't recovered from the last recession
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
At first glance, it seems like the internet should allow for a more geographically distributed economy, and make it easier to get a job regardless of where you live. Instead, the internet has concentrated jobs in cities by making it easier for a few companies to sell services to 'everyone'.
Instead of going to a local store or even a local Walmart, people purchase from Amazon. Instead of doing taxes with a local accountant, more people use TurboTax. Instead of a local lawyer, there are services like legalzoom.
This centralization is likely a big part of what is causing this. This effect will probably continue unless the large internet companies move to a more geographically distributed workforce.
Don’t mean to be absolutist or anything, but as long as the tech giants can afford to fly candidates on site and throw buckets of money at them to move to ever increasingly high COL areas, I only see this trend continuing. Despite the technical ability to work remotely, most companies seem like they’d rather perish (or shove their talent into tighter and tiger corrals) than have people work from their own location. And I don’t see these giants trying to create new hubs in places that aren’t already established, as that’s a long term wager and why delay gratification like that?