I'm kind of surprised the article didn't mention the role of dual-income households. For generations, a single income was the norm and generally able to provide a better quality of life (by standards like home size, discretionary spending, etc...) than your parents' generation.<p>Over time, two incomes went from providing far more than a family needed to being a practical necessity in many markets. I can't imagine buying the type of home I'd like to live in on even my relatively high (by national standards) Bay Area salary alone, and yet many families still choose to live here.<p>Once a family relies on two incomes just to pay the rent, it becomes harder to pick up and move to a different part of the country unless both partners can do it at the same time. Even intra-county moves are more difficult when two partners are working full-time and don't want to deal with the stresses of moving on top of their regular jobs.<p>Maybe the pendulum will swing back as a result of changing expectations (about where to live, how much home to buy, what kind of job you need to have), or maybe remote work will save us all and let us move out of the expensive areas where our jobs are. But for now, I think the rise of the dual-income household is among the biggest factors keeping us in place.
Real estate is so overpriced now, and so difficult to purchase that it's no wonder that people want to stay where they are once they find a place that they can actually afford. It almost feels like the choices are stay or be homeless.<p>I recently decided to move to a new state on the other side of the country, purely because of the low cost of real estate there. It feels like the tipping point was recently reached, and having zero opportunity to have the place I wanted in Utah or California, pushed me to look elsewhere. Elsewhere being Arkansas.
In California you have Prop 13 causing people to stay put. If you bought a house anywhere close to the coast more than 6 years ago you’ve likely seen 50-100% in value increase. Therefore if you move you’d pay that same increase proportionally in property tax.<p>In addition you have 6% Realtors fees to sell plus staging and being out of the house for open houses etc. the math just doesn’t add up.
Someone once said, "A one-way trip to Mars would actually be okay if it had smoking-hot Wi-Fi." Do you think that the Internet has made people feel more content, wherever they are?
I want to move, so badly. It's been my singular goal for over a year now and I've cut back my spending nearly entirely except for rent+groceries to try to save up enough to do so, and I've sold most of my belongings to save more and make the eventual move easier. Moving is what I think about when I wake up and before I go to sleep.<p>I have severe seasonal affective disorder and pretty bad driving anxiety. I've seen mental health professionals for both of these and everyone's just said I should move. I have cognitive techniques for both of these that help a little, and been recommended medications to help, but really the solution is to move and be car-free. On days where I don't have to drive and it's above 65F outside, I genuinely feel like a totally different person.<p>The only place in the US where you can be a first-class citizen without a car and feel the sun every day is San Francisco. It's a nice bonus that SF is a fantastic place to be a hardware engineer too. I've been on a plan of sending out 10-15 applications every week for about a year and have at least 1 phone interview each week. I've been in the interview pipeline with around 60 companies over the past year, and so far received zero offers. Usually it's "we're looking for someone already local".<p>If it ever happens, getting a job in SF and moving there will have been the hardest thing I've ever done. My bank account is at $13k now, so once it hits $20k I'm just going to risk it and move without a job.
Moving isn't always a good thing. Maybe in the past it simply represented high search costs. The only way an Okie could find out if California was the right home for them was to pack up and actually move there. You get to Sacramento and decide that's not right for you, so a year later you move to Fresno.<p>Nowadays you go online and can research local economies, local hiring, local real estate, local churches, etc. You're more likely to move fewer times.
Consider mergers, aside from the very small number of people working in coastal tech jobs, its not like an insurance guy working in Des Moines at an insurance company HQ can consider moving to, perhaps, Milwaukee Wisconsin, because due to endless mergers there is less competition meaning fewer jobs meaning fewer jobs to move to.<p>On the opposite side, if you've got a contractor / gig job, other than the weather during the commute, it doesn't really matter if you move to a new city. You might have to move inside a city for demographic socioeconomic change reasons. Outside very few fields temporarily, the job market is efficient and being a car salesman in kentucky isn't any better than being a car salesman in rhode island, other than very general stuff like weather and quality of life and affordability is somewhat better away from the coasts and similar things probably not worth moving for.
The US is an aging nation. Old people don't move.
For millennial, they have a tough starting position and a long time to wait until the corporate hierarchies above them clear out from the surplus of boomer management. It makes sense that they must "wait their turn" for a longer time than in the past.
Oh man, I'm going through a real mental tug-of-war with myself right now about a potential move. In my late 30s, married, newborn. I have an incredible job right now in almost every way. But we live in an area that neither of us love, right at the time we are finally thinking about actually putting down roots (I've moved a lot in the last 15 years).<p>I have an opportunity to move "back home" where my family and my lifelong friends are. The job would be good enough, though certainly not as great as my current one. Wife works remotely so it doesn't matter for her. That's a major bonus as I make this consideration.<p>This is a tough one, moving for personal/family desires vs. a better work environment. I'd actually be downgrading my work life. And we're not unhappy where we live, just not thriving and it isn't long term for us.
As a remote worker, I would move to the cheapest area while still collecting big city money. Sadly I'm sitting on a future gold mine that I won't sell until it triples in value, which it's half way there in under 3 years of ownership.