Americans have never been so unwilling to relocate for a new job
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.
[1]:https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
The problem isn't that you're an existing homeowner. The problem is housing is exorbitant.
Everyone has to pay out of the nose for housing. The only difference is that you have an asset that has appreciated significantly, and in a way you're indirectly receiving dividends from it in the form of affordable mortgage payments.
But if you didn't have that house, you'd be in an even worse spot.
I own a home and moved. I rent in the new city and let my mother live in the house I own, that way I don't have to sell it. If I ever want to go back I won't have any issues doing so.
How is that true if you moved to a place with an equivalent cost of living?
I had my house built in the suburbs of Atlanta for $350K in metro Atlanta. It’s now worth $650K. If I wanted to buy another house for $650K, I would sell my house. Get $300K in cash, use it for a down payment, and still have a $350K mortgage.
Of course I’m ignoring selling costs, interest rate differences etc.
I have a friend who located from Seattle to Atlanta. He also had a home in Seattle, he had $600K in equity that he was able to use to get a $900K house in Atlanta and have a $300K mortgage.
Except it is now cheaper to rent than to own[1].
If you have to move for a job, you rent for at least a year if not a few years as you get a feeling your job stability. Of course, the main point stands that you can be fired at any time, which is why you never buy a house when affordability is at an all-time low since the crash[2].
[1] https://jbrec.com/insights/demand-shifting-from-owning-to-re...
[2] https://www.atlantafed.org/center-for-housing-and-policy/dat...
Yes there are significant transaction costs but it isn’t as though you are starting again with your housing equity.
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
I'd rather work for less money in a cheaper neighbourhood.
I can reliably find decent work here, without paying too much to get by. We're slowly approaching the limit, though
Mostly paranoia at this stage. Last time I moved away I got laid off... meaning I moved back
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
Paradoxically if you build more housing, population increases, opportunities increase, and housing prices increase.
Maybe it's a big company thing, but every time I've had to end someone's job it took several months of performance management and about 50 to 100 pages of documentation. Imagine about a year of having your team limping and not being able to achieve its commitments, while you have to be polite and supportive to a hostile person who's obviously on their way out but can't see it, and all the while your 1:1 meetings with your boss start with "Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." Every meeting you walk into where they ask why "X" isn't done yet, you can't tell them that Charlie fundamentally can't deliver it, because any mention of that is wandering into HR territory, and you can't take Charlie off of "X" because that's going to screw up the continuity of your documentation. Meanwhile, Charlie is wandering around the halls trying to foment some kind of misguided rebellion against you, and (edit: possibly) stealing stuff.
So not really a whim.
If we are talking about a place with very few labour protection laws (HK/SG/US), forget it: You can layoff after a 10 min discussion. No biggie. Maybe throw a few months of severance pay. If we are talking about Japan, France, or Germany, it is a negotiation with the labour union. (Denmark is a very interesting exception due to "Flex-Security".)
I cannot help but bring up the infamous "Amazon PIP" (performance improvement plan): What is the point? Just sack me with a package on Day One. Much easier and less emotionally damaging!
So Charlie is such a big problem they need to get rid of them, but not enough of a problem where the solution is money.
And the "performance management" thing it's only at certain positions and certain industries. For most people, that is not a thing ( which can be a plus too ).
This is needless and makes me value the rest of the insight less.
(with apologies to Stalin)
Most companies aren't massive and don't have these types of reputational or liability concerns.
"Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." sounds like you hounded your boss into firing your teammate instead of continuing to coach them.
What if that makes someone think, I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't, if performance was above or below a super bare minimum, how that's defined for a programming job, etc.
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.
I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Oh, but then you'll miss out on all of those "random hallway conversations where the real 'innovation' occurs".
America is only a Good Place(tm) for the very rich while its suffering expands out in a Power law distribution. No other "rich" country abuses homeless, the disabled, the almost homeless, and the working poor with as much unequal treatment as much except so-called "third-world" countries. The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
I would defend those in the middle class by saying that they are more comfortable than the poor in America, but have about the same amount (zero) of political power. The middle class is still a worker class, and as such is still subject to the whims of the wealthy capital owners.
I don't think I am in the middle class, as I don't even own a home, but I do make a good living and I would say I am more well-off than many people in the town I currently live in. I know about what's going on in America, and it pisses me off, and if I had the power to change a tiny bit of it I would, but I don't.
I don't know about that. At the very least, a large percentage of Americans know how bad they have it.
Certain Arabic country comes to mind, where fancy skyscrapers and the richest are the only news that one hears from there.
Politicians and big business really fucked us with the whole money printer thing.
This is it. The risk is completely one-sided and massive. Just ~6 months ago a recruiter reached out with a job that to be honest was perfect for my career path goals. But not remote, they wanted me to move across the country. Briefly considered it but it makes no sense, the risk is way too unreasonable.
If a company wants me to move, give me a contractual guaranteee of at least two years salary to be paid even if they reorg my position away. Then it's fair game.
Funny thing is, at least a few decades ago companies realized having a good employee's kid come work for them was a boon. Now they complain about the lack of good workers without thinking about the consequences of their good workers not reproducing in stable families.
If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue). My company had multiple layoffs and then new waves of headcount. Most of the layoffs happened in the US. 100% of the new headcount is in cheaper countries.
Remote work seems glorious if you look at 2020-21. But beware the second order effects!
What I see A LOT is when people have kids, if they originally came from somewhere else is that the city's shine really dulls. They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there. At one place I worked we snatched several senior engineers leaving LA and SF for a more family oriented life.
They move back home, new young people take their place and cycle continues.
Exactly!
Plus, if you already have a house, you probably have refinanced into a low-rate mortgage which itself has enormous value contrasted with dropping it for a higher-rate mortgage on a new home. Even a new apartment lease will likely entail higher costs.
Plus the expense and time of moving.
Except for workers basically just out of college and making a major upgrade in title and pay, I cannot see anyone moving for a new job unless there is a hard written contract with liquidated damages if fired/laid-off (and very tight specifications on being fired for cause).
Employers' behavior over the past several decades has simply eradicated any credibility they once had.
My last boss offered me a $30k/yr raise to move to a different country for a small promotion with no real path forward beyond that. I said, "no way... it would take 6 years (after income taxes) for me to pay for that move with the increase in salary, and the new country's higher income taxes."
A lot could be included in this, but let's make some specifics explicit: if you locked in housing costs in 2020, it's entirely credible that a move could involve a 50-100% increase on that front right now.
Remote work can have pros/cons but it's more or less a declaration of independence for both employees and employers from having to care about market-specific housing costs in general.
For people in relationships it also means both people being able to pursue a wide spectrum of changes in their careers without moving, and one person don't need their partner to make a sacrifice in their career to pursue change.
But with remote work relocation will be less of a necessity.
Usually all the fees are covered by the relocation benefits.
Number 2 is that I get my work & meetings done in the morning and can call it quits at lunch every day (and often do nothing Fridays).
Absolutely. I would never move for a job.
The housing market is simply insane right now. How is someone with a 3% mortgage going to be willing to move if it means their monthly payment will double for about the same amount of house? This is a complete logical, rational decision. But the framing in the title "Americans have never been so unwilling ..." plays right into the "nobody wants to work anymore" BS. The current economic conditions have just made it extremely stupid to relocate for a job in most situations.
You have to be a moron to move right now unless you have to. Even a sideways move to an equivalent value house might be $50k of extra interest per year out the door. $50k you're putting into high yield investments right now. Finishing the mortgage in < 10 years versus starting over with a new 30 year mortgage at double the interest rate. Working 5 or 10 extra years before retiring just so you can move into that new house that you bought when prices were historically high.
Realtors are freaking out locally. Their game has changed drastically.
2014 - 5%/30y
2015 - 3.75%/30y
2016 - 2.75%/15y
2021 - 2%/10y
Not necessarily. The current state of high rates and high valuations (due to few sellers) is very unusual. It is so skewed that, for example, I could sell my condo and use proceeds to pay off my remaining mortgage and buy, for cash, a large house in excellent condition in a smaller town. Someone close to retirement might do that and retire today instead of working another 5-10 years. My 2c.
Typical interest rate fixes are much shorter in the UK though (2, 5, 3, 10 year fixes are the most common)
-You rent out your home and retain and continue to service your low interest rate mortgage.
-You relocate to new city and rent from someone else with a low interest rate mortgage (and thus, presumably, attractive rental terms).
I predict this will become an increasingly common solution (for the subset of homeowners who need to/want to relocate) and that some sort of new middleman/platform will emerge to serve this market (think longer term residential leases, better vetting of renters, etc)
That's it. It's not because of low pay, or noncompetitive benefits, or the strain of moving. All those things are relatively constant.
It's because tons of people either have a 2% mortgage that they will death grip to maturity, are in a rent controlled apartment (many places have ~5% raise caps that fall way short of the 20-50% rent increases seen), or just have a kind landlord that has kept rent stable.
Housing is severely fucked right now, and we're gonna be stuck like this until either more homes are built or people lose their jobs (forcing relocation to another house/rental).
While I'm sympathetic to many of the other arguments that "moving is hard while firing you is easy", that dynamic has existed for at least 25 years. The total insanity of the current housing market is the thing that is relatively new.
The declining transaction volume is more likely due to forward-looking expectations on prices. People can afford it, they're simply opting out of eating the additional costs.
Rates are still low, historically. But as they are moving up from very low, the increases are huge, percentage-wise. Most of the reason home prices have inflated so much in the last decade or two is that borrowing has been very cheap.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tracking-mortgage-rates-1970s...
If rates return to their historical averages, we may see home prices deflating or at least not increasing for a while.
I'm at 2.8%, paying $1100/mo on a 15-year $130k mortgage.
I got lucky. I feel bad for my friends and relatives who did not join the market at the right time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/briefing/cities-yimby-exo...
- people worked for "the company" for years if not their entire careers
- there was little to no fear that you'd get laid off after the move
- the company paid your relocation expenses, perhaps also bought your old house so you would not have to deal with selling it.
- your wife (probably) was a homemaker and did not have to worry about finding a new job.
- kids had to go to a new school and make new friends. Tough luck, kids didn't dictate what parents decided to do.
The flip side of the coin is that it's frustrating as a dev: nobody knows anything, when the entire employee base flips so often. Middle managers just don't get it, AFAICT.
I said this somewhere else in the thread but repeating here - remote work is only a short term solution and a big long term threat. Once all the tools are processes are established to deal with remote work, your job will be instantly shipped to a cheaper country - Canada, Latin America, Eastern Europe or India. American workers should realize that remote work is not going to be like 2020-21 forever. Shareholder class is ruthless.
Agreed. And my point is that is horrible for American middle class, great for American shareholder class and great for software industry in cheaper places. Just like it was for manufacturing.
Source: seeing it myself in my current company. Also remembers: shareholder class is ruthless. If I can see this, they are seeing and acting on it as well.
Moving to a cheaper location allows them to cut a major % of the salary requirement due to living costs. Companies are already saving billions by creating satellite offices in cheaper states and providing remote work in that state or region - some even without requiring any days in the office.
When the salary requirement is reduced by cutting out the cost of living like that, what ends up being the salary minimum is not so much different from what the overseas dev would want. Its not like top talent in that country will work for the American companies for dimes so that American shareholders can have a payday. You either pay that dev something that will make it worth for him to not go for a major local company and lose the social status and perks associated with it (very important in many local cultures), or he will just take a more traditional career route and work for the local giants.
And its not like sloppy copy-paste work from juniors who accept $10-15/hour when they start their career was not available before. If any company that is worth its salt was not able to run a major tech business with such juniors before, they wont be able to run it now either.
Therefore what remote work in the US hurts is basically the outrageous real estate sector and its margins. Which is why they put pressure on companies for RTO through the politicians it backs...
Everybody’s talking about money, as if they’re $100k away from uprooting and setting up shop somewhere else, but like - why? What’s so bad about the place you’re at?
All my friends are here. All my favorite things are here. It’s beautiful here. My family is here. Why would I want to live somewhere else?
I bought a house here, yes it was a good investment, yes I’m holding onto my low interest rate for dear life, but - the reason I bought a house here in the first place is because I didn’t want to be anywhere else. If I wanted to live in Seattle or LA or NYC then I’d have moved there a long time ago - I’m certainly not going to do it now, for work, of all things.
It's not a good system, but it's how it's worked for awhile now.
So price and growth is everything, because people don't want to be working when they're 80 yrs+.
It's not like the past where great retirement benefits were commonplace.
But where do you live after you sell your house? By that point it’s likely you’ve paid off your mortgage, so renting means you now have more money going out each month. Or you buy another house and there goes all your profit. You can downsize, I guess? Not everyone wants to do that, or not everyone lives in a house you can downsize from (ie it may already be small.)
I share your view: I have a group of close friends and a wider network of fun people that I cherish. It's probably the only thing keeping me from exercising my dual citizenship and moving to Europe to have a chance at a decent life away from such obscene rat-race-driven market dynamics.
My husband and I live in Texas as a gay married couple and have "exit criteria" where we'd leave if marriage were threatened, which is in the official platform of the party that controls every branch of government here. My extended family in different generations have left 2 different countries during various stages of dictatorship and unrest, so they are also light-footed despite loving where they currently live.
The higher paycheck, properly managed, can often buy you the freedom to exit a perilous situation for you and your loved ones. I can understand why some people prefer the high pay over a particular living situation, even if it's not for me. I'm choosing to set up roots where I am and be optimistic about the future, but I'm lucky enough to have an actionable exit plan for my family should the need arise.
I agree with you, but people are talking about money because in this context it's likely money that would be (hypothetically) motivating the move in the first place.
I've been approached by recruiters trying to hire developers in smaller communities. I know it is hard for them when this is the only employer (outside of retail or fast food) in that "city" because if things don't turn out, you have to move. Moving is expensive. When you're in your early 20s, everything fits in the back of a pickup truck. If you have family, then things get complicated enough that relocation becomes a large project.
To me, that's not the big barrier. The social/emotional cost of relocation, along with the risk of job loss, is the main driver.
If I sold my house right now, I’d realize a $150k loss + have to pay double the mortgage rate. I’ve never had a relo package above $50k ($37k after tax)
Begin crazy tinfoil hat rant...
Companies have been driven by short term returns for so long that they've completely eroded the trust of everyone.
For the last 40 years companies have been renaming compensation as "benefits" and then reducing those "benefits" under the guise of tightening the belt so they can survive the endless wave of recessions. They have gradually whittled down and eliminated almost all forms of compensation at all levels. Pensions became matching retirement plans, then matching up to 10%, 8%, 6%, and 4%. Healthcare use to be free to employees, now it's paid and the cost goes up significantly every year. Companies sold their offices and moved into leased properties where employees pay for parking but got a stipend until a subsequent recession eliminated that stipend.
These cuts have all been gradual over the decades and new people entering the work force are unaware and assume this is how it's always been and don't question it. At the same time older employees are forced to accept the concessions because they're minor and it's easier to take a minor cut in compensation than find a new job.
We have reached the point where most employees are no longer fairly compensated for their work and have no sense of job security or loyalty. The pandemic amplified this because it forced businesses to enact policies they claimed would be damaging AND then miraculously reported record productivity and profits. Now they're trying to roll back those policies. Employees see long commutes and increased expenses for not real benefit and are rejecting it.
So why the rollback? Most of this rollback is being driven by Private Equity firms who are heavily invested in commercial rel-estate and without staff in offices that rel-estate is tanking. These firms have been purchasing private companies and then steering them to lease properties they own for decades. This is also why Private Equity started investing in residential rel-estate, they're double dipping. If employees have to go into the office then they need to live near that office.
Post pandemic, these companies reported record profits but those gains are dwindling. To maintain these gains they've driven inflation to the breaking point. But inflation isn't sustainable so it's back to cutting costs. What's the biggest cost? Employees and with record low unemployment you have high wages. So now we have layoffs as a way to sabotage the labor market and drive down costs.
This is just part of the cycle the rich use to extract wealth from us.
And then you proceed to describe the exact situation that has been unfolding. Capital always seeks to achieve the highest returns possible by any means necessary. All of these things are just the logical steps a party interested in profit above everything else would take. No conspiracies needed, just cold brutal profit seeking behavior.
I agree that a lot of the pressure for the return to office is coming from investment firms that risk losing their shirt in commercial real estate if it doesn't happen. These firms have a lot of influence at the top of major companies. There seems to be a battle underway between the working class and the investment/management class over remote work long term. It is interesting to watch.
Not only that, but also to maximise control over employees. Companies want powerless employees, even if that means a bit (not a lot) less profits now.
Citation? Maybe for lots of jobs that require unique skills, but the average office drone isn't getting relocation expenses.
If I were to buy a new comparable house, I would pay double the mortgage rate.
The highest relo package post tax I’ve received is $32k ($50k pretax, but in California)
That way firms that aren't sure about relocating someone will not do it. Firms with some confidence in their business will not have a problem.
Boomers put up with this shit. Every other generation is actually prioritizing quality of life long term.
Constantly relocating generally isn't fun, even if it's paid for.
This isn’t why they do it. Getting the vote of that bumfuck district’s Congressperson, who is safely gerrymandered and thus tenured and on powerful committees, is.
I have laughed off more than few recruiters, all who have tried and failed to hire for a somewhat niche IT job an hour north of Grand Rapids, MI over the last year
1. Friends
2. Learning a new city, where is the good pizza, where is the gym, etc for your context
3. Shifting to local cultural norms, like tailgating (both on the highway and at footbal) is just a way of life in Austin, TX.
4. the nature of nesting, converting a building/house into "home", spending weeks or months adjusting to the new surroundings for sleep[1]
5. changing your mailing address on dozens of accounts, drivers license, insurance etc.
6. Finding a new doctor/accountant (and the multistate complexity)
It's actually a wonder we're as mobile as we are when you enumerate the barriers.
What did I miss?
[1]: https://www.ergoflex.co.uk/blog/category/sleep-research/how-... this was the best article i could find quickly, but I seem to recall the effect actually lasts months. Granted this happens when you move locally too.
The above isn't 100% true, some banks do hold onto their own mortgages. However it is sill reasonable accurate.
It's complicated with mortgages because, in the US, mortgages are mostly securitized and resold. This covers 65% of mortgages in 2022 according to
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...
So your mortgage isn't directly on your bank's book. The bank sold it, and then likely bought it back but as part of an MBS.
In the US, there are a lot of small banks that rely on this to reduce their exposure to property prices in the local area they originate mortgages in.
Why would they do that when the US government is paying 4%+, and is much more creditworthy than an individual?
That is why a 30 year fixed home mortgage is ~6%+. Individuals have to pay a premium since they do not have the power to print USD, and so more default risk has to be priced in. Plus the labor expenses of underwriting and issuing a new loan.
But the problem here is that such transience comes at the expense of social networks and democracy.
With the continued rise of remote work, we get to have our cake and eat it too. You can put down roots and build a local community, but now you can also command wages reflecting your productivity without having to relocate.
My main goals at work are being engaged, working with smart people, tackling problems with impacts I care about, and developing deep expertise. I think the markets are fairly well established for skilled labor to dictate what they want from work and choose career paths and companies that suit them. I know SWEs that have worked at the same company for 20+ years. I know SWEs that only accept 6 month work contracts or shorter. I know SWEs that have switched continents several times in their career, and SWEs that have never lived outside of their birthtown (expect for University).
Not necessarily as much as you might think. If they're opening the way to remote work, then you're competing with all the remote workers around, many of whom don't need as high a salary now their housing costs have drastically reduced.
That's not a bad thing. We've been playing Paris and sucking economic activity to a few cities for far too long, IMHO, which has subsidized some very unhealthy city behavior (e.g. SF).
In the future, the city winners of pre-WFH regime are going to face serious budgetary pressure as central business districts atrophy.
They're going to need to make up that tax base (read: keep the lights on) somewhere, and it's inevitably going to shift from business to homeowner/citizen. Remaining service businesses will replace some of that, but you'll be patching a big hole from corporate HQs.
It'll be a question of whether or not people are willing to put up with substantially higher taxes in exchange for urban living.
Interesting times for cities with cash cow CBDs.
And to the benefit of cities with good quality of life that were missing employment options (e.g. the 35°-40° weather-belt in the US).
Things that aren't built into economics models
Right now, a person may have an affordable mortgage at a very low fixed interest rate. Yes, he/she may have more than $150k in equity due to the insanity of the housing market, but that likewise means that all of the other houses have gone up by as much if not more in price. This makes moving very unappealing, and more so if the place to which one is being asked to move is San Francisco, New York City, or some other likewise expensive location.
School. My affordable cost of living. Friends. Family. Familiarity. Churches I enjoy. Sports.
All of the little bits that make life enjoyable to me would effectively be reset, and the thought of having to do that sounds like a massive barrier to entry to any potential job.
Also, a lot of spouses also work these days, so now you have to find two jobs.
Best bet is to find a place with many jobs available for your industry and settle down, so you don’t have to move for your job.
As an aside, a friend in real estate thinks the profession will lose a lot of agents this year due to lack of transactions.
You need to be moving so that you can be in a city you want to be in, you get offered at least 50% more money in nominal terms probably 20% in real terms, or you're making a crazy career jump.
The employer <-> employee relationship is just way too skewed in favor of the employer.
They will cut you loose immediately if situations change. There's no reason for workers to be loyal to employers as a result. So why move for one?
I understand that in-person communication has its benefits, but the proposition is to (a) move myself and my immediate family across the country, (b) pay exorbitant costs for living, (c) be disconnected from the rest of my family, and (d) have no guarantee that I'm not going to get randomly laid off.
You're telling me all of that is worth it because you don't like Zoom? Not be crass, but honestly, fuck off.
That combined with a housing market that is actually not great in terms of sky rocketing prices and increasing interest rates means that a lot of people would have to take financial risks moving and would have to risk a downgrade of their current situation. Especially if they already have a house. And then of the places with the highest needs for workers are exactly where it's most expensive to move to.
That adds up to a lot of hassle to find a new place, a lot of risk and uncertainty, and financial risk for basically a new job. And with everybody hiring, finding a new/better job is not the issue.
So, a lot of companies that maybe aren't so hot, that aren't in a particularly nice part of the world, would struggle to convince people to come to them.
I'm not from the US but I see a lot of this as an (ex) freelancer in Germany where a lot of companies in the middle of nowhere end up with expensive, remote working freelancers based in the bigger cities because they can't hire locally and because freelancers are generally not going to relocate to middle of nowhere Germany for a few months; or do the horrible commute on a regular basis. Just not a thing. That's the price of doing business in middle of nowhere Germany. Move your company to where you can hire if that is a problem for you. Or just pay the premium. I imagine it's the same in a lot of more rural parts of the US where the local talent pool is pretty small.
It's almost as if remote work is good for the worker bees and good for the business, but bad for the useless middle managers who's only job is to make sure people are working performatively.
You are 100% correct! In fact, i will extend that to state that the U.S. should have a better social safety net which would include health care but other resources as well. I know in some circles social safety net is a bad word, but I imagine many workers would more readily move around if they had something to fall back on.
Except, the company's employee churn was crazy, and I knew a few people who got fired shortly after the relocation. It just seems crazy to me that there are no protections for workers like that - you force them to move only to fire them less than 3 months after they upend their entire lives to satisfy a company. Loyalty is a 2-way street now, employers need to realize that.
To me, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if more folks are staying put, living near long-established family and social networks, caring a bit less about careers and a bit more about life.
I suspect that place and family has generally always important.
Yet, early US it took weeks/months for communication to occur over long distance.
Also, let's not forget westward expansion, a thing that lasted even into more recent times. It was quite common for adult children to move west to homestead. There's also immigration to consider, which is a big example of relocation, and these future American's and their descendants continued to migrate (in the early days of the US)
Sadly the only interviews I can get nowadays are non local.
Ownership is a commitment. One that isn't undone without thought, time and effort. It looks great on paper when times are good / great. But ownership adds friction when more fluidity is needed.
Put another way, companies that have figured out or are figuring out WFH / remote are going to fare better than those insisting on a return to office.
It's a good thing. Work is not everything. I actually never knew a person who moved because of work - yes sometimes they looked for work in a new place because they wanted to move to that particular place - because of their partner, climate, politics/security, just to fulfil their dream - but the whole thing of "being offered a good job 2000 miles away so have move there" is entirely foreign to me. Never knew a single person who did that. Just because why?
Academics are one exception. I have moved five times over my career, including from coast to coast and continent to continent to have a livelihood in my field. Work can still be very rewarding.
Remote work levels the playing field significantly for employees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaregions_of_the_United_Stat...
Outside of the Northeast, the megaregions don't really play out. Chicago, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area are all cases where you have a dominant MSA with surrounding MSAs that are essentially dependent on the core MSA, with continuous sprawl between them. But it's not entirely the same dynamic as the Northeast region, although in terms of having a headquarters that people can occasionally visit in person, it works. The Gulf Coast, Cascadia, and Front Range megaregions that are identified are, quite frankly, fantasy that feels like an attempt to stuff as many people into megaregions as possible.
Despite them playing “hardball” with RTO, the fact is that our teams are already distributed and it’s telling that they aren’t mandating we all move to be colocated. I’ll begrudgingly try to commute in a few days of the week to work remotely in the local office, but if management tells me to move coasts I’m out. I’ve got options here.
My point is even with relocation assistance, the deal is still not great (could draw a very strained parallel to indentured servitude). Which is to say, not super appealing.
I got a signing bonus, and if they lay me off then they lose their signing bonus. Yes i negotiated that into my contract.
Quickly Googling, this might be related to the Lancashire Cotton Famine [0].
Throughout the first few months though, it was all "move to X" this, and "we'll sponsor you and your spouse" that. I didn't trust it, because I've been through the meat grinder before. But almost a year in I decided to visit the town where their office was overseas and start a very arms length effort to feel it out. It was interesting to see how immediately upon arrival back, tensions soured between my pathetically toxic manager and I, then after a bad first quarter I was gone.
Sad, because my lady was excited about the prospect of moving, but I was less trusting and more cautious, thankfully. RIP that job. I won't move anywhere for a company unless the conditions of the contract are insanely favourable and/or I'm extremely desperate.
That said, if you're looking for someone in Vancouver;)
And once there's more than one person involved, it's quite sticky. The partner might have a career/position that's at risk if moving. Kids might be old enough or settled enough to have relationships outside the family (particularly in HS). There might be extended family situations that make moving less desirable, or the new geographic location might not be interesting or even in the same country.
In lean times, yeah, people moved for work because, work. Now, they're able to find satisfactory alternatives that don't involve moving - companies would have to pony up enough compensation (whatever form) to overcome this inertia/distaste.
The other element of relocating is its much nicer to be in an area growing than an area that is declining, economically speaking. If there are large pushes for "return to office" or a layoff, its much better to have many options in your area vs. a few major employers with zero growth.
Toss the computers also, as we need to reestablish clerical positions to give the at-home spouse something to do once the last child's in school.
With a pay cut.
And worse incentives than where I was.
?????
They were downright _flabbergasted_ when I said no. As if it weren't going to be a massive disruption to my entire life and way of being.
If I spend my working day on Zoom and Google Meet, why the heck does it matter where I physically am?
I remember being so surprised years ago when a recruiter couldn’t understand why I would fly up to NY for a week at a time and then fly home every weekend. I know there are people who do it, I just can’t imagine it.
The only reason I would personally relocate would be greater freedom, and relocating for a job is antithetical to that notion.
The survey is from https://www.challengergray.com/tags/relocation/ and you can find past information there too.
While this is something that appears to be a "hey, look, 2021 data is even more than the past", it is a trend that has been observed in the before times.
Going from the survey/stats company to an article that one of the surveys was used in brought me to:
Fewer Americans Uproot Themselves for a New Job : https://www.wsj.com/articles/fewer-americans-uproot-themselv... which was published on August 20th, 2018.
It wouldn't even take more than a few seconds reading to look up the massive risks you take relocating for mostly unstable work that are at best only partially compensated by relocation packages.Especially when for many people they'll be launching themselves into a very unfavourable housing market with no risk premium being paid. And yet they put out this terrible biased punditry under a credible looking masthead.
1) At my work, we hired a guy from out of state and he came and got an apartment out here. He moved his family and everything. Then a week into onboarding the government says he can't work on our project with us (we do gov work). So he was basically told he has to find another program that wants to take him, or he will be let go soon! Really sucked.
2) I am relocating for a new jobs soon, and I am getting a 40% pay increase. Really beats the 3% a year I've been getting!!!
If you life anywhere where there had been a large increase in cost of rent and/or housing moving can be a _major and long term_ financial burden even if you ignore the direct cost and complexity of moving.
I case of property, especially if not payed of, it can mean a money loss you might take years to recover from and in case of rent it might include a non small increase in monthly cost.
This can easily make the difference between having a decent live and scrapping by.
And this isn't even including all the other negative effects, like getting further away from friends and family (and support networks), children needing to change school, you needing a new baby sitter, etc. But especially very low income families often _are deeply depended_ on such factors.
*Moving is luxury, at least with today economy.*
At the same time not moving to get a job is also luxury, so I guess people with low income are just majorly screwed.
If you're essentially guaranteed a couple months notice (which could be a non-working period with full pay), that would easily take you until the end of the kids' semester or whatever.