People No Longer Move For Jobs – And It’s Bad! (Data That Will Amaze You)

Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House on the Prairie fame) moved SEVEN times when she was a little girl in the 1870s (from Wisconsin to Missouri to Kansas to Wisconsin to Minnesota to South Dakota).

She failed to mention three of the moves in her famous books because they didn’t always work out well, and life was pretty tough (extreme poverty, death of her little brother, “Pa” worked as a hotel clerk, etc.)

I learned about this in a book about Laura called “Prairie Fires.” It told the real story of the Ingalls family – and it also mentioned that Michael Landon (who played “Pa” in the TV series) got shitfaced drunk every day during filming (which was obviously the best part of the book). TV Pa also had the peculiar habit of taking his shirt off and wrapping bandages tightly around his love handles every time he got injured – which always made me question the authenticity of the TV show.

Anyway, “Pa” moved so much for more opportunity, and he was not alone back then. EVERYONE moved and moved often if they thought there was more opportunity at the end of the road.

In the early 1900s, a full 1/3 of Americans moved ANNUALLY, per this excellent article by RubyHome. By the 1940s, only about 20% of Americans moved annually.

Long-distance migration rates were in the 6 to 7% of the population range as recently as the 1990s (a ton of my business was relocations), but now they are around 3.5%, per the Brookings Institution.

It fascinates me to think about how willing people were to uproot their entire lives – and often say goodbye to friends and family forever – to move for better opportunities.

The fact that people no longer move is “bad” for several reasons:

1. It fosters wage and regional stagnation concerns.
2. It indicates the economy is less dynamic in general.
3. This is the biggie: If we were even back to 1980s relocation rates, we’d see twice as many purchases for agents to facilitate and mortgage lenders to finance.

Reasons Why People No Longer Move – And Will It Change?

There are many reasons people no longer move, per Claude, The Federal Reserve, RubyHome, and this Planet Money podcast (Americans Don’t Move For Jobs Anymore).

1. Americans cling to favored regions. College grads want to be in big cities. Techies want to be in the San Francisco Bay Area. Engineers want to be in Huntsville, Alabama (according to Planet Money 😊). Democrats want to be in blue states. Republicans want to be in red states.
2. Two-income families. If Chevron tells Dad to move to Houston, but Mom is making $350,000 as a lawyer in the SF Bay Area – Dad will tell Chevron to pound sand (I actually know that scenario). In any case, it is much harder to pick up and move when both spouses have careers.
3. Americans are old. Good luck getting us entrenched boomers to move. Youngsters, however, are much more willing to move. America’s average age has climbed 11 years since the 1970s, and but for immigration, it would be a lot worse.
4. Remote work. The ability to work remotely further reduced the number of moves in recent years – and this is a trend that will continue.
5. Less regional variations in compensation. In the old days, we’d see teachers moving from Alabama to Connecticut to earn way more, for example, or we’d see factory workers moving from the South to the Rust Belt. While some regional variations still exist (tech workers in the SF Bay Area), they are much less pronounced.

What Could Cause People to Start Moving Again?

I am not holding my breath, but there are some things that could get people moving again.

1. Cheaper housing in areas with lots of opportunities. If San Francisco or Seattle figured out a way to build way more housing, they’d likely attract a lot more people.
2. A high-growth economy. If our economy starts to grow at 5%+ (or at double-digit rates, as Musk predicts) because of AI, employers will make the rewards for moving too high to pass up.
3. Less crime. A friend of mine is a loan officer in Washington, DC, and he says people are flooding back into the city now that crime has plummeted. If other cities follow suit, we could see a migration back to cities.
4. States and cities going broke. CA, for example, is flat broke – with massive budget deficits, a HUGE pension deficit (over $1 trillion), and top taxpayers fleeing. Services, quality of life, and infrastructure are already impacted severely in many areas – but CA is still able to play games to pretend it’s not broke. At some point, the gig will be up though – and CA could see a mass exodus. A similar situation is playing out in many other states and cities.
5. Tucker Carlson bans every technology that threatens jobs. If that happens, we will all be starving and there will be roving bands of people on the move constantly – wishing we could have it as good as “Pa” from Little House fame.

FINAL POINT: We have been growing at a subpar rate since 2008 (due to excessive regulation and financialization). But if we ever return to normal growth rates, we could see relocations move closer to 1990s levels, irrespective of the reasons people stopped moving.