I wonder how much of this is companies getting stingier with relocation expenses. Even in tech, companies which claim to be begging for more talent tend to offer either no relocation benefits or really kinda insulting benefits ("$5000 max reimbursable with receipts, and you have to pay it back if you are separated within a year" for instance).<p>How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? Especially when job switching is so risky these days. I know a woman who relocated herself to SV to work for a startup and then was terminated a few months later after the startup shifted priorities and eliminated her position.
Two-earner households, and a society that makes a two-earner household a prerequisite for a middle-class lifestyle, makes relocation inherently more difficult.
This is what shoots down the biggest myth of the "pure capitalism" crowd.<p>They have a habit of presenting complicated economics in "Lemonade Stand" simplistic terms. "Labor will move to where they can make the most money, until equilibrium is achieved".<p>If your job moves to China, you can't move your family to China. The same restrictions apply at less restrictive levels for anywhere else.<p>The fact is, labor has never moved freely, and so any model built on that argument is inherently false.
I feel that remote workers and telecomuting could account for some of the decrease. When jobs dried up in my town the tech savvy people got work 100km away in the nearest city but never changed addresses. You couldn't have done that 20 years ago.
Related article that I found quite surprising:<p>The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-fa...</a>
Or is this a good thing? I mean, I know it's de rigeur in journalistic circles to assume that any new trend must be a terrible one, but... if people are happy, and able to find jobs, without needing to move, this is a pretty good thing, right?
OT: in the photo of a late 19th century wagon train heading west there are several people who are walking. Anyone happen to know why they would not be riding the wagons? Are the wagons so loaded at the start that the weight of passengers would be too much for the horses and so some walk until enough supplies are consumed to lighten the load?
Maybe a higher portion of the population choosing to move is choosing somewhere outside of the US? Between cheap flights and better communication technology, moving from one coast to the other isn't so much more inconvenient than moving from the US to Europe, and it's definitely much more exciting.
If you can't even 2x your income by moving somewhere, then there isn't much point. For example, moving from Africa to the US could be much more beneficial than moving from one part of the US to another.