Why Workers Without College Degrees Are Fleeing Big Cities
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But why (serious question)? Other than A) Growing up there and B) Silicon Valley bragging rights the city does not seem to have much going for it. Yet, people still live there and pay a hefty price to do-so.
Cities aren't for everybody. Some people really want green spaces and SF doesn't really offer much there but to think that there are no benefits is just wrong.
Time mostly goes to sleep, work, family, etc.
Not for much longer, the way things are going.
The house I share was bought for $30,000 in the early 1980s, paid for by a single uneducated emigrient worker.
I fear this is a worrying sign that cities will eventually begin to lack necessary labor to keep running.
Doesn’t the twin cities have snow and cold winters? They could use that to similar effect.
I think the biggest thing people have to get used to is that there is roughly a 120F temperature swing from January to August.
-10C is 14F, which I agree is a pretty nice day if you're properly outfitted.
Honestly, the coldest winters I spent were in Southern China, even though it was 5 to 10C out, no indoor heating really sucks and will beat you down quickly.
[1] For example, in a recent discussion about Seattle raising the minimum wage, a restaurant association exec said they had ways of reducing the needed labor, like buying pre-chopped vegetables.
The very reason for the persistent, vocal push for mass transportation. This allows centrally-planned, carefully routed influx of cheap labor, while at the same time keeping the low earning families out of sight & out of mind. The upmarket city districts won't be defiled by the sight of a 10 year old sedan, or, heavens forbid, an unmowed lawn.
Social stratification follows & "us vs them" perceptions rise.
The later doesn't follow from the former - there's nothing about public transport that inherently clusters the affluent around it. Good schools & "nice" neighborhoods would be an overriding concern.
Private transport enables[1] mixing and matching, by the virtue of being rather flexible and quick to react to changes in supply & demand. There's nothing inherent in private transport that would cause self-segregation, nor that would allow planned segregation. Your point about density holds true, but it's still a low-density somewhat homogeneous society.
Public transport, by the vice of being mostly fixed in place and centrally managed, is how one channels people into pre-defined paths and spaces. Sure, higher density is possible, but enclaves of the reliant are created around the transportation hubs, while the affluent can settle anywhere - presumably with no unseemly bus stops & metro rails in view.
Build a bus or metro rail stop, who do you think will tend to settle around it?
[1] does not force, but enables none the less.
At some point either the services people want are worth it, or they're not.
>Many of the jobs that offered a leg up to those without a college background no longer exist and won’t come back.
The jobs thing is interesting. I changed careers via a bootcamp (that's a whole other topic but let's just assume they produce some portion of viable candidates (like me!)), and I found a lot of jobs requiring lots of experience, working with 8 frameworks / languages (at least) described as "entry level"... and if you can't say you worked with all those things the impression you're just out and they'd rather sit there looking for someone for a year (giving HR and recruiters something to do I guess) than actually try someone out.
It would be nice to see more jobs / companies open to hiring non traditional type folks for say 6 months trail, reasonably well paid (obviously not the salary for 8 languages / frameworks guy, and find people who can help to some extent now, and later.
It could extend to even other areas of work with shorter term retraining and reasonably paid, but still entry level type work.
Granted I was paid and there wasn't an official probationary period... but i just understood it to be that way.
After 3 months the company was satisfied, I got a raise(s) and it was all good.
I was so much happier doing actual work rather than just trivia and whiteboard type discussions in order to prove myself.
A few of my peers are working for the same company; the ones that interned have quickly advanced in pay and position, and the ones that did not have felt stifled and have not had a position change. The only difference between them is a few years of age.
As someone who is looking around at the same companies, I can say it's affected my decision to apply and accept offers.
https://www.culturefoundry.com/cultivate/digital-agency-life...
Usually, neither type is able to provide meaningful discussion about the topic at hand.
Not being from US, but often traveling there, I have always wondered how mimimum-wage workers are able to afford living even remotely close to Manhattan or SF.
The answer seems to be that they increasingly can't.
Minimum wage workers in these communities are usually immigrants who double up on very family style living accommodations. It’s still better for them in SF than it was in say Manila.
They split the cost with someone. Either with roommates or a wealthy parent who lives somewhere else.
People on HN can afford it because they get paid a lot. It’s pretty simple.
It fits the definition of the word, so it's taken as such. Not sure what's confusing you.
There's a difference between:
"Doesn't matter to me, I can afford it lol, sucks for people who can't."
and
"I pay X for housing and get paid Y in salary and that's why living here makes sense for me."
You nearly cannot discuss housing costs in Florida or Indiana on the internet without someone from SF feeling the urgent need to say "lol that would get me a cardboard box where I live".
Why they feel the need? I don't know.
Even if housing is 20% of your income in both HCOL and LCOL and it seems completely ridiculous to pay $500k * 20% and not ridiculous to pay $150k * 20%, you can still by more cars, phones, etc. with your remaining $500k * 80%.
This is ignoring the cost of consumables like food, etc. But I believe the same argument applies.
In the states of course. That logic no longer applies in Singapore.
But yes, many expenses are fixed across the country; they might even be cheaper in high COL areas (international travel, foreign food). So 100k in mobile Alabama isn’t 200k in SF. Once you get over your housing differential, everything else is much more mellow.
150k/500k were numbers I pulled out of the air for "well compensated engineers" in L/HCOL. I absolutely agree that people who are not well compensated are fucked. But the thing I've never understood is people who could make 500k by moving to the Bay Area arguing that they're better off staying in a LCOL for purely financial reasons.
Now, note that I currently do not live in the Bay Area and have consistently refused to move there for employment reasons, because there are other things to value besides money. But I've definitely seen the argument made on a purely financial basis, and I think it is misguided.
The house I spent my teenaged years in was purchased for less than 100k and will still sell today for less than 100k. I think my mom would get her money back, and maybe some appreciation, but the sale price of that home will reflect the dwindling economy of the town and region it's in.
In contrast, the house for sale a quarter mile from my current apartment is listed at 2.4 million. It's a little bit larger than my mom's, but the plot of land is probably a little smaller (big house, small yard vs. post WW2 development full of ranch houses with yards big enough for kids to run around and play in).
The town my mom's in isn't a food desert, but I can get an order of magnitude more variety of produce, substantially fresher (for most of year -- during the local late summer and harvest season she can get fresh, local, cheap produce).
And similarly, the town my mom still lives in isn't a dead economy, but there's no way i'm getting a tech job with an office within bicycling distance of her house, whereas from my current apartment i can bicycle to a few dozen local technology employers.
Also I'm currently willing to pay a premium for good weather.
The HCOL area isn't the obvious net win it should be on paper. I live in a "blighted shithole" so to speak. I paid $10 for a buffet dinner and $0 for parking. All those nickles and dimes really add up fast.
A few years ago I co-founded a company that provides services to Midwestern exurban towns with the goal of turning them from just a commuter's bedroom into places people might actually want to spend some time (and some money). It's one of the hardest challenges I've ever taken on.
Our public-facing presence is a digital media outlet (website, app, facebook) for each city we cover, but most of our work is done face-to-face with local business owners, the Chamber of Commerce, and the city government. It's a very small operation and we don't make a lot of money from it, but we think it's important to try to save our towns and, in the age of toxic social media and outlets like Next Door/Citizen/Neighbors, foster a real life community in your real life downtown. Outdoor, face to face.
Seriously though, in the US practically every other option is considered before wages are raised. Wage suppression is real even if people don't want to admit it.
As far as the rest of the population... Well they'd be richer if they were paid decent wages!
This statement lacks precision and is a poor way to open the article. It implies that this is the only time that particular net change took place, not a net-negative change. EG, maybe 2000 people left last year?
While one can certainly infer, it's poor style IMO.
Having said that, i'm using Chrome Incognito with uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger extensions, i'm not getting any paywall on this article...
EDIT: Looks like there's a 10 article limit before the paywall kicks in, that's why only some users are seeing it - they've run out the limit.
The cool kids don't mind paying for journalism and all that, and the press deserves our support (etc, etc). Most of the content I enjoy here is written for free by hobbyists or company blogs.
Here you go