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Americans Are Moving Less Than Ever, and It's Bad For the Economy (qz.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The best job for someone is not always in the area where they live. Often times, the job that will pay them most, and make the best use of their skills means moving to another city, state or country. Though making the choice to move can be difficult emotionally, it is extremely good for economic growth. Productive people make productive economies. Unfortunately for the US economy, people don't move they like they used to. According to recently released data from the US Census, only 10.1% of adults moved homes from August 2017 to August 2018. This is the lowest rate of moving since the government began collected data in 1948. The census tracks moves within counties, within states, or across states, and no matter how you look at it, moving rates are way down from just 15 years ago. For example, from 2002 to 2003, 2.8% of Americans moved across state lines. From 2017 to 2018, it was just 1.5%.

18 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Housing is unaffordable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you bought a house in 2014, and need to move, you'll be looking at housing that is 50% more expensive than it was then. That's a hard pill to swallow when CPI-adjusted wages have been going down over the same time.

    1. Re:Housing is unaffordable by Ichijo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, and it's a good thing the home you are selling is also worth 50% more!

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    2. Re:Housing is unaffordable by bkmoore · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It costs a lot of money to both sell and buy. The break even point is only if the property that you buy costs less than the one you sold minus the transaction costs on both ends of the deal. In that situation you're throwing away x-dollars in equity that you would have had if you stayed put. Real Estate is not a liquid asset that you can simply push "Sell" on and get your money, despite what many Real Estate "professionals" will tell new buyers.

    3. Re:Housing is unaffordable by Cimexus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yep absolutely. I moved to the US from Australia a few years ago and holy hell, housing is cheap here compared to much of the world.

      A very typical, average suburban home is pushing $1 million in most Australian cities. Here, outside a few bubble zones (e.g. Bay Area), you can pick up similar houses for a couple of hundred thousand. I've lived in Asia (Singapore, Japan) and Europe (England, France) as well, and the US is cheaper than all of them.

      Mind you, there is a downside ... and that is property taxes. I pay a pretty hefty property tax bill in the US on my place that would not be an ongoing expense back in Australia, so I supposed I have to factor that in. Still it would take many decades of property taxes to add up to the difference in initial cost.

    4. Re:Housing is unaffordable by goose-incarnated · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, and it's a good thing the home you are selling is also worth 50% more!

      Presumably you're moving from a place with fewer jobs to a place with more jobs, hence the house you are selling will have increased in value much less (or even decreased in value) than the corresponding house at your destination.

      --
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    5. Re:Housing is unaffordable by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is nothing wrong with the house prices in the vast majority of the US. Housing is generally affordable and readily available. No, not in the coastal cities, but you can't generalize based on those.

      The problem is most of the jobs are in the coastal cities. So cheap prices in middle-of-nowhere Nebraska aren't all that helpful.

      (And before anyone says "work remotely!!" that is frequently not a stable employment situation)

      I don't get why people feel trapped by family, friends, or circumstance to the extent that they are willing to live in places with shitty costs of living, essentially making no money

      I lived in a dying rust-belt city with an incredibly interesting job that paid well and a fairly low cost of living. I moved.

      Why? I had kids. And the thing about cheap places to live is the schools are utterly terrible in a very large portion of them. I'm not going to cripple my children's entire future so that I can gloat about a low cost of living.

  2. Inability to take big risks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've moved over 30 times and lived in 9 countries now, but I still remember being 22 living in the middle of nowhere in the US and most people act like moving to another state is like the end of the world.

    Considering that America was founded by people who risked their entire future going to an unsettled country, it's a shame we've come to this now.

    1. Re:Inability to take big risks by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Considering that America was founded by people who risked their entire future going to an unsettled country, it's a shame we've come to this now.

      Yes what a shame it is that we have progressed to stable lifestyles. I would feel more whole if I said goodbye to my family for months to go work in a gold mine.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    2. Re:Inability to take big risks by youngone · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have only lived in three different countries. Every time I moved I learned something about myself and the world around me.
      It amazes me how timid and frightened of change many Americans seem to be.

  3. Maybe we're satisfied with where we are? by WoodstockJeff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, a "better opportunity" may exist, but "good enough" also has its advantages.

  4. Well duh. by rlitman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unemployment is low, and good local job opportunities are aplenty, so the costs of moving just don't merit the benefits. But this is a lagging, rather than leading indicator of the economy.

  5. "only" by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    , only 10.1% of adults moved homes from August 2017 to August 2018

    Only 10% of adults moved within one year???

    Is it only me to whom that sounds too high, not low?

  6. This. by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I moved because I got a huge raise, but it increase my monthly housing costs by well over 50% (small town where I could afford a house to a big city where I couldn't). Now, I more than doubled my pay, so it was economical even with being stuck in an apartment. But I'm no fool, I know I'm not building any wealth, it's just that the jobs in the small town I was in were busy being outsourced and I didn't have a lot of choices.

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  7. Reasons by hackertourist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Unaffordability of housing.
    2. Both partners working. It's one thing to have one partner start a new job. Moving long-distance means the other partner has to find a new job as well.
    3. Most jobs don't come with a long-term contract. It's hard to justify a long-distance move when you may be out of a job after 1 year.

    All of these conspire to create a situation where everybody accepts the commute from Hell rather than moving closer to where they work.

  8. Moving is Risky by Notabadguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Moving might be good for the economy, but stability is good for people. Pensions are a word of a prior age, employer training and investment in their employees are less, relocation packages are stingier or often non-existent; loyalty is a nebulous word without meaning in corporate culture today...all of those destabilizing factors make moving and taking a new job a risky affair.

    That doesn't address homes, values, children, schools, or anything else.

  9. I don't think we have stable lifestyles by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    like I said in another thread, 60-80% of us live paycheck to paycheck (it's a wide margin because you can run the numbers either as "has money in the bank but not enough for anything major" or "dead broke").

    Moving is a sign of upward mobility. Literally. The fact that there is less of it is an indication that upward mobility is slowing down or stopping. There are plenty of other indicators for this too (stagnant wages, an increase in low paying jobs, outsourcing of higher paying jobs, etc, etc). This is one more nail in that coffin.

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  10. Millenials are killing the moving industry by T.E.D. · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you read TFA (which you won't do, so I did it for you), they largely put it down to millenials, who are moving significantly less (although still far more than the average over all ages) than young people of previous generations. OTW: This is yet another "Millenials are killing X" headline.

    Of course we've seen pretty much every one of those are really down to that generation being far poorer and more unemployed than similar generations were at that same point in their lives. There just aren't the opportunities there used to be for young people. This ain't their fault, and the headlines really should be blaming the people with power and resources in this society, not the victims.

  11. Re:Moving? by jeff4747 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is the norm, and it seems to work well for the VAST majority of the country.

    No, it is tolerated by the VAST majority of the country.