Americans Are Moving Less Than Ever, and It's Bad For the Economy (qz.com) 346
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%.
Housing is unaffordable (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.
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and it's a good thing the home you are selling is also worth 50% more!
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
That's one of the dumber things I've heard in a long time.
That assumes that the property you're buying never changes value. But that flies in the face of reality. Yes, real estate isn't a liquid asset, but over time, it's almost always an investment that significantly increases in value. And while you can cherry pick times and places where this is not true, in general, it holds true.
If your plan is to hold onto real estate for such a short period of time that it doesn't increase in value and the transaction
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Historical norms should be taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, certain gambling games always go up, until the black swan comes along and multiplies by zero.
How many 2008s can the average person soak up in one lifetime?
Russ Roberts interviews Nassim Nicholas Taleb on rationality, risk, and skin in the game [econtalk.org] — 5 March 2008
I find Taleb to be more aggressive than necessary, and
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.... Automated appraisals are starting to be accepted, which should help.....
You have to really see a house to accurately appraise it. I'm no expert, but have both bought and sold homes in the past and will pay the money out of pocket to have a home professionally appraised, as a sort of insurance policy. It's the same as having a trusted mechanic check out a used car before pulling the trigger.
Re:Housing is unaffordable (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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You're also assuming folks are moving FROM a home where they have equity
Given that the OP was talking about a person who bought a house in 2014, it's safe to assume that they are moving from a home in which they have equity.
and not a condo or an apartment.
It sounds like you don't understand how condos work. People buy condos, just like they buy houses. A condo's owner has equity in their condo, the same way that a house's owner has equity in their house. A condo's owner may rent their condo out to someone else, which I'd wager is what's confusing you, but that's just as true of houses as it is condos, so it's
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, let's look at the data:
Here are the median home prices by State for 2018:
West Virginia $96,800
Oklahoma $121,500
Arkansas $123,600
Mississippi $124,600
Alabama $129,000
Ohio $136,700
Kansas $137,800
Indiana $139,000
Iowa $141,500
Kentucky $142,900
Louisiana $147,300
Michigan $148,100
Missouri $157,100
Nebraska $161,500
South Carolina $163,200
Tennessee $163,200
Pennsylvania $171,000
Illinois $178,000
North Carolina $179,200
Georgia $182,200
Wisconsin $183,400
South Dakota $184,400
Texas $190,400
New Mexico $191,200
Vermont $201,400
North Dakota $205,400
Wyoming $222,300
Florida $228,700
Maine $229,700
Montana $229,900
Minnesota $230,800
Delaware $232,500
Connecticut $241,700
Idaho $246,200
Arizona $246,800
Virginia $254,000
New Hampshire $271,100
Rhode Island $277,900
New York $286,200
Maryland $286,700
Nevada $287,400
Alaska $310,400
New Jersey $323,400
Utah $325,400
Oregon $339,000
Colorado $370,600
Washington $377,100
Massachusetts $402,500
California $546,100
Washington D.C. $576,100
Hawaii $620,100
Texas is roughly in the middle and homes on my street ( 3/2/2 full brick, ~2k sq ft, 1/4 acre ) are appraising at ~$150k, selling around ~$170k. So, assuming my home is paid for ( and it is ) I can choose pretty much the first dozen or so States on this list without having another mortgage.
Unfortunately, I have no desire to live in any of those States and the ones I would like to live in, fall near the bottom of the list.
Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Colorado. ( Hawaii would be nice, but that price is ludicrous ) All of which are easily double the cost of my home.
So, do I move and spend the next 15-30 years ( depending on the loan ) paying off another mortgage, or do I put that money into retirement accounts instead. . .
Decisions, decisions . . . .
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on the flip side.. stay with mom and dad while you get your career off the ground. save up your 20% and buy a house. If you need to move, rent it.
Case in point, kid I work with is 24 lives with his mom and dad still, but is able to save 80/90% of his net income. That seems vastly better financially in the long run than running out on your own immediately.
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:4, Insightful)
MOVE the fuck out, struggle, live poor until you can make it, that's what the rest of us have done for modern history till now.
This is the single dumbest thing I've read in a while. IF you get along with your parents, AND they are offering/allowing a sweet deal, it makes significant financial sense to live with them until preconditions are violated. You can put a lot of money away like this. A lot of people have done this through history, and in some other countries this is the norm. I think this became common in the US about 80 years ago many more urban jobs were opening while rural jobs were in massive decline. But things have changed, I see kids living with their parents being much more common for a while.
And no, if you want to succeed and build salary and position, it is NOT going to be with the company you are at. Learn to job shop, keep your interview skills up....and be willing to MOVE to where the jobs are.
20 years ago, when I graduated from the university, companies would pay for my move. It was just assumed. I happened to work in a local job for a while that, at the time was an amazing deal . A few years later something better came along that offset not only what I was saving on rent, but then some, in a good area. So I moved, and had quite a lot saved up in the interim.
These days though, getting your future employer to cover your moving expenses is not obvious. Some simply will not, others require VP approval, and a few of the richest and most successful will cover a fraction, maybe enough to justify the cost.
The thing to remember is, by the time you move, they may no longer need you. I have seen several people caught in the space of 6 weeks, move across country and then find they had no job afterall. It is a risk to be wary of. 3 years ago I'd have said take the risk. Right now the market is tapering off and I think we'll be hitting a recession in 6 months, it's about the last moment to make this move if you can do it quickly.
I don't understand the sense of moral obligation we are placing on children to leave the nest. They will want to do so for personal reasons, but it isn't necessarily the smartest choice.
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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.
Exactly this. When housing was generally affordable and readily available, it was relatively easy to get established somewhere else. Now, the combination of housing scarcity and expense, coupled with such things as high college debt and low savings, means that it's too much of a hurdle to pull up roots and move for anybody but the most affluent. Especially if you have family/friends in your current location, you'd have to have an extremely attractive job offer, maybe plus moving expenses, before it would ma
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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.
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. We live in a giant country with tons of interesting little cities and countless interesting jobs to do. You can live a very h
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:5, 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.
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Sure, because 40% of the population living in coastal cities is something that should be readily ignored when it comes to talking about numbers.
Re:Housing is unaffordable (Score:5, 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.
This. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Even if you were paying the same percentage of your salary for everything, you'd also be saving double as well. It's great if you have positive savings, and horrible if you have negative savings.
Moving? (Score:2)
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If you come to Europe, you will probably find that unless you live in the center of one of the larger cities - where most people couldn't afford a decent place to live - you still need a car. You will also find that car ownership is 2-3 t
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You forgot to mention SF with poop on the sidewalks.
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"SF with poop on the sidewalks."
As a adherent of coprophilia I love Poop Science Fiction.
"Before Eden" by Arthur C. Clarke
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"Portland and Seattle you ride a bike or walk and you can do it without stepping over trash or the smell of urine everywhere"
So the constant rain washes the urine away.
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Not the poop though, you need a power washer for that: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/judges-complain-its-unsafe-unsanitary-outside-county-courthouse-in-seattle/
Of course, one city councilman deemed such an act racist, evocative of police turning fire hoses on civil rights protestors.
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Afford the extra transport costs everyday? That shows a better wage that can pay for a nice home in a safe, clean area.
Re:Moving? (Score:5, 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.
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Inability to take big risks (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.
Re:Inability to take big risks (Score:5, 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.
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I don't think we have stable lifestyles (Score:5, Insightful)
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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People moving up in the world buy nicer houses (Score:2)
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I've never left the country, but I have also moved 30+ times. I'm tired.
Also, it just gets harder the older you get. Not just age, but more stuff, and after kids ... jeez, it's a lot.
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The key here is "unsettled". I can't just drive to Seattle and grab a lot of unused land for free.
Re:Inability to take big risks (Score:5, Insightful)
It amazes me how timid and frightened of change many Americans seem to be.
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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.
Timid and frightened of change because we don't want to move to another country? I've lived in 5 different states for various reasons. Never once have I considered the downgrade of moving to another country, and yes it is very much a downgrade to move virtually anywhere else in the world. That's not not timid or frightened, it's me not giving a flying fuck about your country because you have nothing I want.
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Ignorance is bliss.
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I think that the big problem is that is now costs a small fortune to move in the US if you have to buy and sell a home. Once the realtors, lawyers, state and local governments, mortgage company, and moving company all get their cut, you can easily be out of pocket over $20,000 if you're moving out of state.
That wouldn't be bad if companies still offered moving bonuses or relocation assistance, but most do not.
Re:Inability to take big risks (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe we're satisfied with where we are? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, a "better opportunity" may exist, but "good enough" also has its advantages.
60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (Score:2)
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Yes, a "better opportunity" may exist, but "good enough" also has its advantages.
Or maybe people are just happy with the location choices they have already made, and for more than simply work-related reasons; see The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart [amazon.com]. Explains a lot about the polarized state of the nation.
Well duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things here (Score:3, Insightful)
First, not everything is about the economy. This seems like an actual win for quality of life in that people can stay close to their families and form communities
Second, how has telecommuting been factored into this analysis. It could be that people are now able to mee fuller economic potentials in place
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Second, how has telecommuting been factored into this analysis.
tbh these kinds of jobs are hard to find.
Moving sucks (Score:2)
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No kidding. My wife is originally from California, but moved to Michigan to marry me. She's been wanting to move back for a long time now (she has an aging mother she wants to be near) but the cost of moving across country is insane, even if we get rid of everything but the essentials. Not to mention having to have a job already lined up (I'm in IT, but over 40), find affordable housing somewhere (even outside of SV it's insane), and leave something in savings in case everything goes tits up. As much we'd like to move to where we want to be, we just can't.
You're doing it wrong - it's easier to move the mother to you than to move to the mother. The mother is retired, won't move with kids in tow, probably already got rid of all additional crap that they don't want anymore (many retired people do this) and won't need to look for a job at the destination.
An added bonus might be that the mother will be spending her retirement nest-egg at a lower CoL place and so will have money for a much longer time than in California.
My golden rule in life is that under no cir
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"Americans are lazy, bring in immigrants." (Score:3, Informative)
That's basically what happens when any statistic is generated.
Americans aren't moving enough? We need more visa workers!
Americans won't work for low pay? We need more visa workers!
Americans change jobs too frequently? We need more visa workers!
Future Genealogists will thank us (Score:2)
Do you know how much a pain it is when your g-g-grandfather moved to a new state and you don't know where he was born.
Geeze. For the sake of your own grandchildren. Stay put.
"only" (Score:5, 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?
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Not really. It suggests that people move, on average, once every ten years, which doesn't seem that crazy. Bear in mind that young folks usually rent, and tend to job hop a lot, which means they have the opportunity to move closer to their next job as soon as their previous lease is up.
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I agree it seems a bit high, but when you consider how many people rent and chose not to renew their annual lease and moved to a different apartment across town, the number may not be so high.
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Moving costs (Score:3)
Moving is expensive... (Score:2)
Reasons (Score:5, 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.
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International moving is very difficult (Score:2)
Re:International moving is very difficult (Score:4, Informative)
This is true ... but it's also true of the US itself. I've applied for (and been granted) professional work visas for both Canada and the US over the last decade and the process was similar in both, in that you had to prove there was no local person who had the necessary knowledge or background to do the work. You also have to prove you wouldn't be being paid substantially differently than the local for the same work.
The US is no different in this regard (at least for the L1 type visas typical for professional work). It's always a pain hiring a foreigner in any country because the company takes on the burden of sponsoring them, processing all the immigration paperwork etc.
I disagree with this premise! (Score:2)
People were doing a lot of moving when the economy went sour, but that was just the reaction to being unable to stay gainfully employed at the pay-rate you expected to receive.
I knew people working in construction, for example, who had to move wherever the job opportunities were -- because all of a sudden, they found themselves unable to find steady work doing home repairs or renovations. The fact they lived in a big city, full of homes, suddenly stopped guaranteeing jobs for them. They had to resort to "st
Work/life balance (Score:2)
I don't see this as a bad thing. It's probably better that people become more invested in their current communities.
Cost oif moving (Score:3)
Maybe it's a matter of moving being good for the economy because it pumps so much money into moving expenses too?
In a house, there's the costs of bringing everything up to par to sell, the closing costs for a new mortgage (on both sides), the cost of moving services, inspections, fees, and tons of other one-time costs. Additionally, lenders get interest on the appreciated value of both locations rather than on the prior value.
For the massive number of people in apartments and other rentals, there's move out fees (usually cleaning and such regardless of how clean the place is left), move-in fees, deposits, etc. Again the cost of moving services (unless you're doing the Pickup Special).
As another commenter pointed out, moving is really expensive (They quoted $15,000 average for a family). It's also disruptive and stressful and has other costs involved aside from pure monetary costs, such as learning a new area. Fewer people have that much in savings, and fewer people have faith in continuing to have their job in a year or two, making the risk of the move not worth the value.
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$15K to move your stuff...don't forget 3-6% of the purchase price of the house, the cost to get a new mortgage, the lawyers' fees, any real estate transfer tax you may need to pay.
Even if you own your house free and clear, the transaction costs are in the thousands. Most people roll it into their mortgage and pretend they're not paying it, but they are. Doing this over and over again gets REALLY expensive over a lifetime.
Moving is Risky (Score:5, 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.
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All good points. To make matters worse, corporate culture is very homogenized. Within an industry there is less an less to differentiate one company from the next. Most mid-tier companies offer very, very similar salaries (they benchmark against each other based on job titles, rather than pay based on employee value), very similar benefits, very similar vacation, and so forth. Beige boxes were the fashion, now everyone has moved to cheaper and crappier open office BS.
Basically jobs are a meal ticket and
Sure, it's great for the economy (Score:2)
because it's expensive to move! And it's great for the real estate people who suck up a commission on every transaction if there's a sale of property involved.
I moved from state to state, house to apartment, apartment to house, several times in a period of about 10 years. It was crazy.
I used to make CAD models of furniture and the new house/apartment so I could figure out what goes where before we moved in. I also made lists of box contents and numbered the boxes so I could locate things quickly and easi
Home ownership is the reason (Score:2)
A home is a high illiquid asset, very difficult to sell quickly. For majority of Americans home equity is the single largest component of their net worth. It is not easy to move looking for a job in a new place with that millstone tied to your neck.
I moved half way across the world seeking better life/job/career. My daughter would not look for a job across the town. I ran the rat race, she would not. She says, "the problem in running the rat r
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I believe your daughter is wise.
We are incentivized to stay put (Score:2)
The mortgage interest deduction incentivizes us to purchase rather than rent. It seemed like a good idea at the time to encourage people to invest in their homes, but we now know that's a very bad idea. Not just because it harms the economy by reducing mobility, but also because it encourages people to oppose new housing in order to protect their investment by restricting supply. They do this by protecting density limits which in turn limits property tax revenue and makes the land tax-inefficient (low tax r
I'd rather have stability (Score:4, Interesting)
Millenials get all the press, but there comes a time in people's lives where it actually makes sense to stay in one place for a while. For a lot of people, the lifestyle of moving across the country over and over again just to take another job isn't appealing. Either you're a permanent renter, or you end up spending insane amounts of money in real estate transaction costs. It's not just the house price...it's the mortgage origination fees, the legal fees, real estate commissions, transfer tax, the cost to move, etc.
Moving all over the country made sense back in the good old days of semi-permanent employment. A company would spend a lot of time and effort on you and it was in their best interest to keep you employed. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, it was still very common for a company to move an employee to wherever a new promotion opportunity was, all expenses paid. Lots of kids I knew had their parents transferred. Today, IMO that makes little sense. The cost is almost always mostly paid by the employee, and there's no guarantee you'll have a job 6 months after you uproot your family and move.
And, I know I'm going to get dinged as being old, but there's something to be said about putting down roots and becoming a part of a local community. You don't get that if you're chasing contract positions across the country and never in one place for more than a year or two. Look at military families as an example of what frequent moving around does to a kid's ability to make and maintain friendships.
People are bad for The Economy (Score:2)
Never mind that people want to live lives of connectedness in a community where they know their neighbors and surroundings and climate. It's bad for The Economy, so screw community!
People are bad for The Economy. Let's just do away with them and use robots.
The economy should serve people and their wants and needs, not vice versa. Fuck The Economy.
I don't want to move every 5 years. (Score:2)
And I'm a stoic minimalist that lives in a 35m^2 apartment. I could move all my stuff in 4 hours or less.
But it takes time and effort to build a social network (a real one) and once I've settled in and found new friends it sucks to move. So the new job better pay, big time and offer interesting perspectives and/or projects. Since it usually doesn't, go screw yourself and quit wasting my time Mr. Recruiter.
My 2 eurocents.
Millenials are killing the moving industry (Score:5, 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.
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All the millenials I know have moved quite far. My roommate moved to SF from Seattle where she works in Network Security, my colleagues moved from Seattle to NYC, W Virginia, and South Korea after their postdocs.
All millenials. All moved.
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It's more likely older Americans that are impacting this. We've all decided we want to live in vibrant urban centers with university and colleges and arts, and we are getting rid of all of our possessions so there is less need for moving trucks. In fact, many older Americans I know own 2-3 places, in different states/climates, and they move back and forth. When they're out of town, their kids (mostly millenials) use their places, for the most part, and there's not much need to buy new stuff.
Look, this whol
Well, "Duh!" (Score:2)
American households are mostly two-income households now. If I pursue and take a job in distant city or state, that means our household could see a 50% drop in income. How many have the ability to weather a cash flow decrease like that?
Seriously... this has been the case with American households since at least the '80s.
Telll the Amazonians tough (Score:2)
It's my house and I'll move when I'm dead.
We're old (Score:2)
I remember the days when moving was a 2-3 day job. Pack, move, buy pizza/beer, unpack. Now? Maybe 3 days to pack, hire a mover, waste a day because
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"More and more children are living at home because they have a greater struggle than their parents."
What utter bunk! Children who are focused and motivated have no problems in this area. My 25-year-old son recently bought a house. In Seattle, which isn't exactly a low-cost housing market, and it did it entirely without any help from his parents.
Re:Simple things missed? (Score:4, Insightful)