There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.
One of the most frustrating things I’ve seen during any period of layoffs including this one is seeing people that have just moved for a new position get laid off soon after. Especially so if they’ve moved overseas. Like you said, culturally we’ve decided that the newly laid off and relocated took the risk and it’s their fault for taking that risk. Companies apparently share no part in the burden even while trying to lure folks to work for them.
I had a boss who moved a guy from Russia to the US just so he could fire him. He was gone ten days after he arrived and all the paperwork was done. I guess that worker protections in Russia were really strong at the time, the guy was untouchable while he was there.
America is built on the exploitation of undocumented workers for the food supply and of cheaper foreign labor held hostage by employers for tech. These are forms of coercion much as tying health insurance to employment. Tools of power to keep employees at a disadvantage.
If you are a homeowner it is almost insane to move. Most people I know could not afford their house if they were buying it today. Often by a huge margin. Moving would mean becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing. It’s too late to start a whole new 30 year mortgage, even when you account for the proceeds from selling their existing house. Prices are insane. This is a natural consequence of home prices doubling or tripling over the past 10 years.
We are in that boat now, Wife has an offer to move to San Diego area. We are homeowners in a 30 year fixed at 3.75% and moving back there is almost impossible due to rates being at > 6% and barely any houses on the market and prices which are close to what they were in 2022(we moved from that area in 2022). We are very close to saying F - it with her rescinding her offer, this economy and housing market is beyond bad.
If your home you bought 10 years ago doubled or tripped, why can't you move? You pocket the difference, put that down on the next over priced house, bringing your mortgage principal back down to the small mortgage you were paying 10 years ago on a cheap house. Ya, the rate is higher... But if you just made $600k on your $300k house, that you've paid down to $200k hopefully atleast... And you move and buy a house for the same $900k you just sold yours for, you only have a mortgage on $200k. Yes at a higher rate. And yes with higher property taxes. But hey, that's life. Don't move if it's not worth it. But it's not as impossible as you make it seem.
> Moving would mean becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing
The problem isn't that you're an existing homeowner. The problem is housing is exorbitant.
Everyone has to pay out of the nose for housing. The only difference is that you have an asset that has appreciated significantly, and in a way you're indirectly receiving dividends from it in the form of affordable mortgage payments.
But if you didn't have that house, you'd be in an even worse spot.
>If you are a homeowner it is almost insane to move.
I own a home and moved. I rent in the new city and let my mother live in the house I own, that way I don't have to sell it. If I ever want to go back I won't have any issues doing so.
This is entirely dependent on which market you are moving from and to. Within the same market it's a wash on average. From a more expensive market to a cheaper market you are coming out ahead. Your conundrum really only applies when going from a cheaper market to a more expensive market.
> Most people I know could not afford their house if they were buying it today
How is that true if you moved to a place with an equivalent cost of living?
I had my house built in the suburbs of Atlanta for $350K in metro Atlanta. It’s now worth $650K. If I wanted to buy another house for $650K, I would sell my house. Get $300K in cash, use it for a down payment, and still have a $350K mortgage.
Of course I’m ignoring selling costs, interest rate differences etc.
I have a friend who located from Seattle to Atlanta. He also had a home in Seattle, he had $600K in equity that he was able to use to get a $900K house in Atlanta and have a $300K mortgage.
> becoming a renter again and losing a much larger chunk of their paycheck every month to housing
Except it is now cheaper to rent than to own[1].
If you have to move for a job, you rent for at least a year if not a few years as you get a feeling your job stability. Of course, the main point stands that you can be fired at any time, which is why you never buy a house when affordability is at an all-time low since the crash[2].
You don’t start from scratch. You sell your existing house, which has benefited from inflation, then buy somewhere with the same mortgage payment over the same remaining duration you had if you choose not to trade up.
Yes there are significant transaction costs but it isn’t as though you are starting again with your housing equity.
This is probably a big reason why gigantic cities are continuing to grow everywhere. The best way to reduce the stress of being laid off is to move somewhere with as many employers as possible.
Agreed. Years ago my wife and I considered moving to my hometown, a medium sized city with affordable housing (at the time).
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
A few years ago, I moved to Boston for a tech job. The cost of living was like 25% higher, but my salary almost doubled, so I came out for the better.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
New York Times ran an article yesterday saying otherwise. First tier cities, in terms of size, are losing people, but second tier cities are growing. The cost of living in the largest cities puts a negative force on moving to them.
Or work remotely. From somewhere cheap. It truly feels like a hack.
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
Maybe it's a big company thing, but every time I've had to end someone's job it took several months of performance management and about 50 to 100 pages of documentation. Imagine about a year of having your team limping and not being able to achieve its commitments, while you have to be polite and supportive to a hostile person who's obviously on their way out but can't see it, and all the while your 1:1 meetings with your boss start with "Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." Every meeting you walk into where they ask why "X" isn't done yet, you can't tell them that Charlie fundamentally can't deliver it, because any mention of that is wandering into HR territory, and you can't take Charlie off of "X" because that's going to screw up the continuity of your documentation. Meanwhile, Charlie is wandering around the halls trying to foment some kind of misguided rebellion against you, and (edit: possibly) stealing stuff.
If we are talking about a place with very few labour protection laws (HK/SG/US), forget it: You can layoff after a 10 min discussion. No biggie. Maybe throw a few months of severance pay. If we are talking about Japan, France, or Germany, it is a negotiation with the labour union. (Denmark is a very interesting exception due to "Flex-Security".)
I cannot help but bring up the infamous "Amazon PIP" (performance improvement plan): What is the point? Just sack me with a package on Day One. Much easier and less emotionally damaging!
Thats if you want to get rid of an individual. It's easy if you can just put the problem person on the layoff list because the company is doing a 10% WFR as part of a stock market right-sizing initiative
They could fire Charlie without cause. Sounds like management just doesn't want to pay out UI or severance. So they'll let you suffer to document a cause.
So Charlie is such a big problem they need to get rid of them, but not enough of a problem where the solution is money.
Even here in the UK, if a company is having redundancies you can be out the door in days or even hours. Firing a specific person for something non-performance needs paperwork, but that's a very specific case.
And the "performance management" thing it's only at certain positions and certain industries. For most people, that is not a thing ( which can be a plus too ).
I like how you say this from the perspective not of a team lead but as another person on the team. Which means you actually don't have any real sense of how much documentation your boss had to do, just what your boss told you they did.
"Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." sounds like you hounded your boss into firing your teammate instead of continuing to coach them.
It’s almost amazing to me that CEOs have all these ideas for how to hire and retain but never once consider the very things they demand to be hired and retained. Almost like they think of the rest of us as not real people.
To play devil's advocate -- you have to think about bad actors though.
What if that makes someone think, I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't, if performance was above or below a super bare minimum, how that's defined for a programming job, etc.
That would be a massive improvement over what we have now, but even having to move within a year after your last move is difficult, expensive, and incredibly stressful.
I don't think it's quite that, it was the pandemic and forced remote work.
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.
I think we have to acknowledge that multiple causes are at play.
The graph in the article shows a strong decrease from the late '80s to the pre-pandemic period. There's a further decrease from the 2018-2020 bar to the 2021 bar, and another drop between the 2022 bar and the Q1 2023 bar.
I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
America is only a Good Place(tm) for the very rich while its suffering expands out in a Power law distribution. No other "rich" country abuses homeless, the disabled, the almost homeless, and the working poor with as much unequal treatment as much except so-called "third-world" countries. The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
> The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
I would defend those in the middle class by saying that they are more comfortable than the poor in America, but have about the same amount (zero) of political power. The middle class is still a worker class, and as such is still subject to the whims of the wealthy capital owners.
I don't think I am in the middle class, as I don't even own a home, but I do make a good living and I would say I am more well-off than many people in the town I currently live in. I know about what's going on in America, and it pisses me off, and if I had the power to change a tiny bit of it I would, but I don't.
Do you have any statistics to back up anything you're saying, or is everything "just so"? How precisely are we "abusing the disabled"? Are there metrics for this? How does it compare to other countries? Can you give examples of what you're even talking about? Or how about even just... be specific?
> There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
This is it. The risk is completely one-sided and massive. Just ~6 months ago a recruiter reached out with a job that to be honest was perfect for my career path goals. But not remote, they wanted me to move across the country. Briefly considered it but it makes no sense, the risk is way too unreasonable.
If a company wants me to move, give me a contractual guaranteee of at least two years salary to be paid even if they reorg my position away. Then it's fair game.
This. My recently-laid-off partner received an offer from a company in Germany (we're from the US), and they offered a guaranteed contract of at least 2 years salary and a short probation period. That's an easier thing to stomach... You mean you _have_ to employ me for at least 2 years? Okay!
As the ideal employee in a 90's Dilbert strip (from the boss's perspective) said, "having a personal life is like stealing from the company". There's yet another headline on this site today about falling birthrates, and I can't help but wonder about the connection.
"Having any dedication outside your company is stealing from your company. Now here's an advertisement showing you the excitement of cheating on your partner for some quick fun." May not be causation, but they sure are eager to not let a good crisis go to waste.
Funny thing is, at least a few decades ago companies realized having a good employee's kid come work for them was a boon. Now they complain about the lack of good workers without thinking about the consequences of their good workers not reproducing in stable families.
OP's quote: "your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind."
If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue). My company had multiple layoffs and then new waves of headcount. Most of the layoffs happened in the US. 100% of the new headcount is in cheaper countries.
Remote work seems glorious if you look at 2020-21. But beware the second order effects!
It might be better said that remote work is better for the remote worker's economy. In regions where remote workers moved to, people with money in the bank found themselves homeless as there was nowhere left to live.
You move to a big city when you are young. Enjoy the social activities, the night life etc. If at some point you get married, have kids etc - generally you don't get to make full use of the city anymore, though you're still paying full price.
What I see A LOT is when people have kids, if they originally came from somewhere else is that the city's shine really dulls. They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there. At one place I worked we snatched several senior engineers leaving LA and SF for a more family oriented life.
They move back home, new young people take their place and cycle continues.
Living downtown in a big city, perhaps not. You can still be close enough to a big city to participate in its labor market while living in a much less dense area.
>>There’s a fundamental disconnect between how hard it is to relocate and how easy it is to lose your job.
Exactly!
Plus, if you already have a house, you probably have refinanced into a low-rate mortgage which itself has enormous value contrasted with dropping it for a higher-rate mortgage on a new home. Even a new apartment lease will likely entail higher costs.
Plus the expense and time of moving.
Except for workers basically just out of college and making a major upgrade in title and pay, I cannot see anyone moving for a new job unless there is a hard written contract with liquidated damages if fired/laid-off (and very tight specifications on being fired for cause).
Employers' behavior over the past several decades has simply eradicated any credibility they once had.
Ya, some employers simply don't understand this. The last two times I've moved, the total costs were upwards of $50k, and that doesn't include the $50k I lost on the first house (due to the 2008 financial crisis).
My last boss offered me a $30k/yr raise to move to a different country for a small promotion with no real path forward beyond that. I said, "no way... it would take 6 years (after income taxes) for me to pay for that move with the increase in salary, and the new country's higher income taxes."
This. OMG this. This has happened to me twice in my career. It’s as if everyone has FAANG money or are like the tenured people who have a large amount of equity to tap into.
In my experience the more experience you have the worse you get treated, and economic headwinds are constant and continual, on top of that they're getting ready to cut people off of food stamps they're so confidant in this economy while intentionally shutting it down literally it makes you crazy, it makes you homeless.
> getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services
A lot could be included in this, but let's make some specifics explicit: if you locked in housing costs in 2020, it's entirely credible that a move could involve a 50-100% increase on that front right now.
Remote work can have pros/cons but it's more or less a declaration of independence for both employees and employers from having to care about market-specific housing costs in general.
And this is exactly why people congregate in places like Silicon Valley and New York. If you lose your job there's a 98% chance you can find another job you like within commuting distance.
For people in relationships it also means both people being able to pursue a wide spectrum of changes in their careers without moving, and one person don't need their partner to make a sacrifice in their career to pursue change.
Are there still people relocating just for a job?Purely observational but the people I know willing to relocated (or already gone) it's mainly because they want to move out of the city, due to weather, crime, lack of things to do, infrastructure or whatever their reason is. I know there are exceptions where the opportunity, the money or both is so good that if offsets the risk of things not working out. But the vast majority of people changes companies to a slightly better position with a slightly better compensation.
Lots of other good comments on this thread, but the Bloomberg title almost makes me want to join the r/antiwork crowd.
The housing market is simply insane right now. How is someone with a 3% mortgage going to be willing to move if it means their monthly payment will double for about the same amount of house? This is a complete logical, rational decision. But the framing in the title "Americans have never been so unwilling ..." plays right into the "nobody wants to work anymore" BS. The current economic conditions have just made it extremely stupid to relocate for a job in most situations.
This was the tradeoff when you bought your house in 2021. Highest prices ever, lowest interest rates ever. Buy and you're locked-in for at least 5 years.
Or bought a long time ago but kept re-financing the mortgage over and over.
You have to be a moron to move right now unless you have to. Even a sideways move to an equivalent value house might be $50k of extra interest per year out the door. $50k you're putting into high yield investments right now. Finishing the mortgage in < 10 years versus starting over with a new 30 year mortgage at double the interest rate. Working 5 or 10 extra years before retiring just so you can move into that new house that you bought when prices were historically high.
Realtors are freaking out locally. Their game has changed drastically.
the market is still hot enough here to cover my 2021 price. but all the other hassles noted would make a move to anywhere but my dream regions for greater pay a no go.
Wouldn't it be nice if mortgages could be tied to the borrower instead of the property? Imagine that as a borrower, you could keep your existing mortgage terms when moving to new houses (assuming similar property values, etc.) and if you needed to buy a more expensive home then you'd have to get an additional loan to cover the difference or pay cash, etc.
This can 'sort of' be done thru loan assumption. But it is a provision that only some loans have. And it isn't tied to the borrower but to the asset. Example would be you were selling your house and a buyer wanted to 'assume' your mortgage. They could actually do that where they take over the remaining principal, a loan assumption provision would allow that. Granted, the buyer would still need to come up with the cash for the rest of the price of the home (selling price - remaining loan balance) and to do that, the buyer would either need to bring cash to the table or get a 2nd loan to make up for that difference.
I was told that my Canadian mortgage could be 'ported' like this, although I haven't had to look into it. From my experience Canadian mortgages have less fees up front at closing compared to US mortgages but typically they sway you towards a locked 3 to 5 year term where you might face penalties for breaking the mortgage. The 'port' options can be used in this situation to avoid the fees.
You could accomplish this in a roundabout way outside the mortgage system:
-You rent out your home and retain and continue to service your low interest rate mortgage.
-You relocate to new city and rent from someone else with a low interest rate mortgage (and thus, presumably, attractive rental terms).
I predict this will become an increasingly common solution (for the subset of homeowners who need to/want to relocate) and that some sort of new middleman/platform will emerge to serve this market (think longer term residential leases, better vetting of renters, etc)
It's because housing costs have exploded in the last 2 years.
That's it. It's not because of low pay, or noncompetitive benefits, or the strain of moving. All those things are relatively constant.
It's because tons of people either have a 2% mortgage that they will death grip to maturity, are in a rent controlled apartment (many places have ~5% raise caps that fall way short of the 20-50% rent increases seen), or just have a kind landlord that has kept rent stable.
Housing is severely fucked right now, and we're gonna be stuck like this until either more homes are built or people lose their jobs (forcing relocation to another house/rental).
Totally agree. The housing market is simply in a state of stasis right now. Sellers are loath to sell at a loss, and buyers can't afford these prices because interest rates have gone up so much.
While I'm sympathetic to many of the other arguments that "moving is hard while firing you is easy", that dynamic has existed for at least 25 years. The total insanity of the current housing market is the thing that is relatively new.
Most homeowners would make a profit, but any of them who have bought or refinanced a house in the past few years would be idiots to sell now because of the interest rates.
Yep. If I were to move to a comparably-priced house with an otherwise comparable mortgage at today's rates, my costs would go up $1650/month. That's 20 grand a year. So before a company could even begin to entice me with a raise, they need to increase my salary by about $30k (accounting for taxes) for me to feel like I'm breaking even.
Practically, for your average well-to-do white collar worker, the additional $20k in interest payments might equate to 10% of gross income. The pain of the additional expense is certainly non-zero, but it isn't necessarily prohibitive. Especially if that $20k is going into savings or investments anyways, it's not coming at the cost of foregoing some other current consumption. Many people could afford it, but have some hesitation.
The declining transaction volume is more likely due to forward-looking expectations on prices. People can afford it, they're simply opting out of eating the additional costs.
I think my first mortgage in the mid 1990s was around 7%. I remember double-digit rates in the late 70s/early 80s though I was too young to really care about it then. Home prices didn't inflate so crazily then either.
Rates are still low, historically. But as they are moving up from very low, the increases are huge, percentage-wise. Most of the reason home prices have inflated so much in the last decade or two is that borrowing has been very cheap.
In 2015, I bought a 2500 sqft home in a great school district on 1.5 acres. Zillow says it's now worth $330k, and would need a mortgage of roughly $2800/mo. Six doors down, a neighbor is renting for $2100/mo.
I'm at 2.8%, paying $1100/mo on a 15-year $130k mortgage.
I got lucky. I feel bad for my friends and relatives who did not join the market at the right time.
Additionally, there are many hedge funds purchasing houses to rent. This has priced so many young people out of the market that the media has finally noticed the younger generation is skipping children because they can't afford kids.
I'm surprised you're the only one saying this. Being locked into a good mortgage or rental situation requires a significant increase in pay (with some job security) to offset the risk of moving.
Relocation in unappealing because companies will let you go in a blink of an eye. With the recent tech layoffs, many people who left their lives to relocate for a job were let go even before they started. You experience that once and you’d almost never relocate in your life, especially now that remote work is becoming a commonly available option.
My grandfather worked for GE his entire life after coming back from Korea in his early 20s, I was 6 in the early 90s when he finally retired at age 64/65 and the bosses came to his retirement dinner and gave him a gold watch. Can you imagine something like that happening today?
That's all true to a significant degree. Of course, the reverse expectation was that you'd be a "company man" and spend your career (or at least a decade or two) at the company.
> specially now that remote work is becoming a commonly available option.
I said this somewhere else in the thread but repeating here - remote work is only a short term solution and a big long term threat. Once all the tools are processes are established to deal with remote work, your job will be instantly shipped to a cheaper country - Canada, Latin America, Eastern Europe or India. American workers should realize that remote work is not going to be like 2020-21 forever. Shareholder class is ruthless.
Yes and no. They tried that in the 90s and it didn't work out. It turns out timezones, language and culture matter. So yes, remote work will mean that US white collar workers will have to compete with workers in other countries, but that's not impossible. We may find that yes, that drags down compensation in the US, but it also pulls up compensation in the rest of the world, and there's just a wider range, more developers available in general and more coding happens as software continues to eat the world. How AI figure into this is anybody's guess - don't believe anyone who claims to know.
Remote work has been the reality for years now and yet this hasn’t happened. If anything it’s the opposite and companies are focusing on more in person workers.
The only reason the shareholder class hasn’t been gutted is that the people you’re saying they’ll lay off are on their side. Both parties have large minorities just begging for a popular directive to do so.
Man am I in the minority for not wanting to move cause I love the place I live?
Everybody’s talking about money, as if they’re $100k away from uprooting and setting up shop somewhere else, but like - why? What’s so bad about the place you’re at?
All my friends are here. All my favorite things are here. It’s beautiful here. My family is here. Why would I want to live somewhere else?
I bought a house here, yes it was a good investment, yes I’m holding onto my low interest rate for dear life, but - the reason I bought a house here in the first place is because I didn’t want to be anywhere else. If I wanted to live in Seattle or LA or NYC then I’d have moved there a long time ago - I’m certainly not going to do it now, for work, of all things.
I think it's important to realize that (at least in the US) houses are considered not only an investment - but basically one of the keys to retirement. Getting into a house, waiting for the market to gradually go up over your lifetime and then selling it to retire on that profit is how a lot of people get by.
It's not a good system, but it's how it's worked for awhile now.
So price and growth is everything, because people don't want to be working when they're 80 yrs+.
It's not like the past where great retirement benefits were commonplace.
> Getting into a house, waiting for the market to gradually go up over your lifetime and then selling it to retire on that profit
But where do you live after you sell your house? By that point it’s likely you’ve paid off your mortgage, so renting means you now have more money going out each month. Or you buy another house and there goes all your profit. You can downsize, I guess? Not everyone wants to do that, or not everyone lives in a house you can downsize from (ie it may already be small.)
Ruthless lifestyle minmax-ers are probably over-represented on this site, it comes with the intensely analytical and neurotic dispositions that are so common among those who are successful using their technical expertise.
I share your view: I have a group of close friends and a wider network of fun people that I cherish. It's probably the only thing keeping me from exercising my dual citizenship and moving to Europe to have a chance at a decent life away from such obscene rat-race-driven market dynamics.
I agree with you in that money's not enough to draw me away from where I live, but you can love where you live and recognize that you need flexibility. I think, all things equal, setting down roots is a great thing, but it can be hard for some.
My husband and I live in Texas as a gay married couple and have "exit criteria" where we'd leave if marriage were threatened, which is in the official platform of the party that controls every branch of government here. My extended family in different generations have left 2 different countries during various stages of dictatorship and unrest, so they are also light-footed despite loving where they currently live.
The higher paycheck, properly managed, can often buy you the freedom to exit a perilous situation for you and your loved ones. I can understand why some people prefer the high pay over a particular living situation, even if it's not for me. I'm choosing to set up roots where I am and be optimistic about the future, but I'm lucky enough to have an actionable exit plan for my family should the need arise.
I agree with you, but people are talking about money because in this context it's likely money that would be (hypothetically) motivating the move in the first place.
Portland. Some things have gotten worse, some things have gotten better - much like myself. But it’s still here, and so am I. I haven’t found any other place I’d rather be.
There is a simple solution to this: cover relocation expenses for new hires. As wacky as this sounds, it was standard practice to pay for relocating engineers. That's how my family moved so much when I was growing up. During the 80s, companies started cutting back, so that by the 90s, only managers & executives were getting paid relocation.
I've been approached by recruiters trying to hire developers in smaller communities. I know it is hard for them when this is the only employer (outside of retail or fast food) in that "city" because if things don't turn out, you have to move. Moving is expensive. When you're in your early 20s, everything fits in the back of a pickup truck. If you have family, then things get complicated enough that relocation becomes a large project.
As others have stated, that stipend would not cover doubling of mortgage (due to high interest rates). That stipend also gets clawed back if they pay you off within 1-2 years.
If I sold my house right now, I’d realize a $150k loss + have to pay double the mortgage rate. I’ve never had a relo package above $50k ($37k after tax)
If you can ever compensate for them at all. It’s basically impossible to make lifelong friends after 35-ish. Maybe that’s why all the seniors I know are inflexible about relocation, among the many other reasons. Too much damage for a job you might not even like (who knows, it can go either way despite best attempts).
This is not a solution in a system where your position can be cut after you've sold your house but before you start your first day. What you describe is that a main way to get a promotion used to be to move. I doubt that is really the case for most people anymore. Additionally, if you move to the wrong place you will be moving again when the CEO runs the company into the ground doing buybacks instead of growing the company.
Companies have been driven by short term returns for so long that they've completely eroded the trust of everyone.
For the last 40 years companies have been renaming compensation as "benefits" and then reducing those "benefits" under the guise of tightening the belt so they can survive the endless wave of recessions. They have gradually whittled down and eliminated almost all forms of compensation at all levels. Pensions became matching retirement plans, then matching up to 10%, 8%, 6%, and 4%. Healthcare use to be free to employees, now it's paid and the cost goes up significantly every year. Companies sold their offices and moved into leased properties where employees pay for parking but got a stipend until a subsequent recession eliminated that stipend.
These cuts have all been gradual over the decades and new people entering the work force are unaware and assume this is how it's always been and don't question it. At the same time older employees are forced to accept the concessions because they're minor and it's easier to take a minor cut in compensation than find a new job.
We have reached the point where most employees are no longer fairly compensated for their work and have no sense of job security or loyalty. The pandemic amplified this because it forced businesses to enact policies they claimed would be damaging AND then miraculously reported record productivity and profits. Now they're trying to roll back those policies. Employees see long commutes and increased expenses for not real benefit and are rejecting it.
So why the rollback? Most of this rollback is being driven by Private Equity firms who are heavily invested in commercial rel-estate and without staff in offices that rel-estate is tanking. These firms have been purchasing private companies and then steering them to lease properties they own for decades. This is also why Private Equity started investing in residential rel-estate, they're double dipping. If employees have to go into the office then they need to live near that office.
Post pandemic, these companies reported record profits but those gains are dwindling. To maintain these gains they've driven inflation to the breaking point. But inflation isn't sustainable so it's back to cutting costs. What's the biggest cost? Employees and with record low unemployment you have high wages. So now we have layoffs as a way to sabotage the labor market and drive down costs.
This is just part of the cycle the rich use to extract wealth from us.
And then you proceed to describe the exact situation that has been unfolding. Capital always seeks to achieve the highest returns possible by any means necessary. All of these things are just the logical steps a party interested in profit above everything else would take. No conspiracies needed, just cold brutal profit seeking behavior.
>So why the rollback? Most of this rollback is being driven by Private Equity firms who are heavily invested in commercial rel-estate and without staff in offices that rel-estate is tanking.
I agree that a lot of the pressure for the return to office is coming from investment firms that risk losing their shirt in commercial real estate if it doesn't happen. These firms have a lot of influence at the top of major companies. There seems to be a battle underway between the working class and the investment/management class over remote work long term. It is interesting to watch.
> So why the rollback? Most of this rollback is being driven by Private Equity firms who are heavily invested in commercial rel-estate and without staff in offices that rel-estate is tanking. These firms have been purchasing private companies and then steering them to lease properties they own for decades. This is also why Private Equity started investing in residential rel-estate, they're double dipping. If employees have to go into the office then they need to live near that office.
Not only that, but also to maximise control over employees. Companies want powerless employees, even if that means a bit (not a lot) less profits now.
But relocation expenses are covered in a lot of jobs, yet people don’t relocate. Beyond the early career moves, it is extremely hard for people to move. It goes beyond just financial hurdles. It’s not easy for example to move your kids to a new city and new schools.
Or instead of this law, we make stock buybacks illegal again. Then, companies flush with profit, have to take better care of the employees they bring on.
Plenty of companies do cover relocation expenses. In fact defense contractors who spent decades dodging taxes by moving facilities to bumfuck nowhere rural areas are so desperate they've been ponying up large signing bonuses on top. The problem is many of the companies complaining nobody wants to relocate is because they are located somewhere that's a career deadend. They may be the only employer in the area or there's barely more. The cost of living may also be lower but the quality of life may not be so great too.
Boomers put up with this shit. Every other generation is actually prioritizing quality of life long term.
Constantly relocating generally isn't fun, even if it's paid for.
> defense contractors who spent decades dodging taxes by moving facilities to bumfuck nowhere rural areas
This isn’t why they do it. Getting the vote of that bumfuck district’s Congressperson, who is safely gerrymandered and thus tenured and on powerful committees, is.
Sort of. Most common relocation packages vest over two years and cover some costs. Only the very best packages compensate you for the loss of money on your house in the market and I’ve yet to see any packages that compensate for inflation-adjusted loss. Most of the time if you get fired 6 months after relocating you owe the company 75-100% of your relocation package depending on the vesting terms.
I have laughed off more than few recruiters, all who have tried and failed to hire for a somewhat niche IT job an hour north of Grand Rapids, MI over the last year
To me a missing part of the puzzle/article is simply this. What percent of people have moved in the past 3 years? People aren't pure homoeconomicus on just the CoL and their potential salary. There's a human part of not wanting to move because they have done so recently. It's all the social/emotional toil that others have mentioned.
1. Friends
2. Learning a new city, where is the good pizza, where is the gym, etc for your context
3. Shifting to local cultural norms, like tailgating (both on the highway and at footbal) is just a way of life in Austin, TX.
4. the nature of nesting, converting a building/house into "home", spending weeks or months adjusting to the new surroundings for sleep[1]
5. changing your mailing address on dozens of accounts, drivers license, insurance etc.
6. Finding a new doctor/accountant (and the multistate complexity)
It's actually a wonder we're as mobile as we are when you enumerate the barriers.
This is probably one of the better comments in the thread and I think a lot of people are glossing over it. It is not easy to remake your "community" as they say.
Readit News
The cost of moving is huge: uprooting your family, switching the kids’ school, losing your friends and local interests, re-learning a new community, getting grief from your mortgage lender or insurer, paying early termination fees on rent and services, legal fees and taxes, packing and unpacking your stuff, loading up on new risks…
Whereas your job can end at the whim of a boss or the slightest gust of economic headwind.
The problem isn't that you're an existing homeowner. The problem is housing is exorbitant.
Everyone has to pay out of the nose for housing. The only difference is that you have an asset that has appreciated significantly, and in a way you're indirectly receiving dividends from it in the form of affordable mortgage payments.
But if you didn't have that house, you'd be in an even worse spot.
I own a home and moved. I rent in the new city and let my mother live in the house I own, that way I don't have to sell it. If I ever want to go back I won't have any issues doing so.
How is that true if you moved to a place with an equivalent cost of living?
I had my house built in the suburbs of Atlanta for $350K in metro Atlanta. It’s now worth $650K. If I wanted to buy another house for $650K, I would sell my house. Get $300K in cash, use it for a down payment, and still have a $350K mortgage.
Of course I’m ignoring selling costs, interest rate differences etc.
I have a friend who located from Seattle to Atlanta. He also had a home in Seattle, he had $600K in equity that he was able to use to get a $900K house in Atlanta and have a $300K mortgage.
Except it is now cheaper to rent than to own[1].
If you have to move for a job, you rent for at least a year if not a few years as you get a feeling your job stability. Of course, the main point stands that you can be fired at any time, which is why you never buy a house when affordability is at an all-time low since the crash[2].
[1] https://jbrec.com/insights/demand-shifting-from-owning-to-re...
[2] https://www.atlantafed.org/center-for-housing-and-policy/dat...
Yes there are significant transaction costs but it isn’t as though you are starting again with your housing equity.
There are a grand total of 2 employers in her field in the whole city. It’s simply not possible to reliably grow her career there.
In the end we stayed in our expensive city; in 4 years she got promoted twice, then had multiple competing offers for a new job when her employer went under. Career growth, top wages, and a plethora of jobs are available here. The only reason not to stay is because a decent condo starts at a million, but we got in at 3% interest rate so even that turned out okay.
This job was on-site, so there was no choice but to live here. And by "here" I mean a 60- to 90- minute commute, both ways.
Now? My job is 100% remote, and any job I would consider would have to be 100% remote. Assuming this trend continues, I think we'll see an exodus from high cost of living areas to (slightly) smaller towns.
People are still going to want to live in places that have services, entertainment, and so on, so this isn't going to gut cities, but it will make living in the sticks more plausible.
"Why would I move? This is Boston: if there are high-tech jobs at all there will be something here."
I'd rather work for less money in a cheaper neighbourhood.
I can reliably find decent work here, without paying too much to get by. We're slowly approaching the limit, though
Mostly paranoia at this stage. Last time I moved away I got laid off... meaning I moved back
Not sure if these conditions will remain but it's just nuts atm. Entry/Mid level engineers out-earning local principal engineers with 30+ years experience.
Paradoxically if you build more housing, population increases, opportunities increase, and housing prices increase.
Dead Comment
Maybe it's a big company thing, but every time I've had to end someone's job it took several months of performance management and about 50 to 100 pages of documentation. Imagine about a year of having your team limping and not being able to achieve its commitments, while you have to be polite and supportive to a hostile person who's obviously on their way out but can't see it, and all the while your 1:1 meetings with your boss start with "Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." Every meeting you walk into where they ask why "X" isn't done yet, you can't tell them that Charlie fundamentally can't deliver it, because any mention of that is wandering into HR territory, and you can't take Charlie off of "X" because that's going to screw up the continuity of your documentation. Meanwhile, Charlie is wandering around the halls trying to foment some kind of misguided rebellion against you, and (edit: possibly) stealing stuff.
So not really a whim.
If we are talking about a place with very few labour protection laws (HK/SG/US), forget it: You can layoff after a 10 min discussion. No biggie. Maybe throw a few months of severance pay. If we are talking about Japan, France, or Germany, it is a negotiation with the labour union. (Denmark is a very interesting exception due to "Flex-Security".)
I cannot help but bring up the infamous "Amazon PIP" (performance improvement plan): What is the point? Just sack me with a package on Day One. Much easier and less emotionally damaging!
So Charlie is such a big problem they need to get rid of them, but not enough of a problem where the solution is money.
And the "performance management" thing it's only at certain positions and certain industries. For most people, that is not a thing ( which can be a plus too ).
This is needless and makes me value the rest of the insight less.
(with apologies to Stalin)
Most companies aren't massive and don't have these types of reputational or liability concerns.
"Sooooo... What's going on with Charlie? Are you documenting? I don't feel like you're documenting." sounds like you hounded your boss into firing your teammate instead of continuing to coach them.
What if that makes someone think, I can do zero work at my job and I'll get paid regardless? Or they do a super bare minimum, being incredibly unhelpful to everyone and their whole team hates them?
Now you're going to have courts deciding what constitutes grounds for firing and what doesn't, if performance was above or below a super bare minimum, how that's defined for a programming job, etc.
Broadly what I saw is before the pandemic, employers reserved "remote work" for a select few, the boss gets to stay in his city and work from home, but you have to relocate. Anytime you would bring this up with your employer they would just go "well we just don't know [what would happen if you went remote]".
The pandemic flipped that on it's head because now everyone was working from home and realizing that most jobs could be done remotely. Now that employer can't tell you that same line before, because everyone knows the game is up, everyone knows you can be equally productive remote as you can in the office, so employees are calling the bluff.
I think the drop from the 80s to the pre-pandemic years is reflective of both greater precarity in employment and increases in housing costs in markets with lots of job opportunities.
The drop from pre-pandemic to 2021 may certainly be because of the greater share of remote-work that you're citing; people relocated, but often _in spite of_ work.
I think the gap between 2022 and early 2023 has gotta be at least partly due to the combination of greater economic uncertainty/increased recession fears and high costs to move b/c of high interest rates.
We wouldn't have gone from 29% to 1.6% without multiple factors swinging together over time.
Maybe at smaller companies, and... for now. I'm placing bets that mega-corps will be back to 5 days/week by the end of the year. If "hallway conversations" are a reason for 3 days per week, then "the data" will show that 5 days leads to more hallway conversations. Managers want to see their empire. Smaller companies will do what they always do: copy bigger companies.
Maybe I'm at peak cynicism, but I suspect we'll end up back where we started. A very small number of remote-first companies (that have always been remote-first), and then everyone else. Big corps will say remote didn't work, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Oh, but then you'll miss out on all of those "random hallway conversations where the real 'innovation' occurs".
America is only a Good Place(tm) for the very rich while its suffering expands out in a Power law distribution. No other "rich" country abuses homeless, the disabled, the almost homeless, and the working poor with as much unequal treatment as much except so-called "third-world" countries. The middle class of America is small, privileged, and unaware of the suffering and exploitation of ~100 M Americans below it and of its enablement of the "1%" to continue the status quo.
I would defend those in the middle class by saying that they are more comfortable than the poor in America, but have about the same amount (zero) of political power. The middle class is still a worker class, and as such is still subject to the whims of the wealthy capital owners.
I don't think I am in the middle class, as I don't even own a home, but I do make a good living and I would say I am more well-off than many people in the town I currently live in. I know about what's going on in America, and it pisses me off, and if I had the power to change a tiny bit of it I would, but I don't.
I don't know about that. At the very least, a large percentage of Americans know how bad they have it.
Certain Arabic country comes to mind, where fancy skyscrapers and the richest are the only news that one hears from there.
Politicians and big business really fucked us with the whole money printer thing.
This is it. The risk is completely one-sided and massive. Just ~6 months ago a recruiter reached out with a job that to be honest was perfect for my career path goals. But not remote, they wanted me to move across the country. Briefly considered it but it makes no sense, the risk is way too unreasonable.
If a company wants me to move, give me a contractual guaranteee of at least two years salary to be paid even if they reorg my position away. Then it's fair game.
Funny thing is, at least a few decades ago companies realized having a good employee's kid come work for them was a boon. Now they complain about the lack of good workers without thinking about the consequences of their good workers not reproducing in stable families.
If remote work is established properly, then your remote job will end instantly and will be shipped to Canada or Latin America (if bosses care about timezones) or to Eastern Europe or India (if timezones are not an issue). My company had multiple layoffs and then new waves of headcount. Most of the layoffs happened in the US. 100% of the new headcount is in cheaper countries.
Remote work seems glorious if you look at 2020-21. But beware the second order effects!
What I see A LOT is when people have kids, if they originally came from somewhere else is that the city's shine really dulls. They move back to where they came from, especially if there's a family support structure there. At one place I worked we snatched several senior engineers leaving LA and SF for a more family oriented life.
They move back home, new young people take their place and cycle continues.
Exactly!
Plus, if you already have a house, you probably have refinanced into a low-rate mortgage which itself has enormous value contrasted with dropping it for a higher-rate mortgage on a new home. Even a new apartment lease will likely entail higher costs.
Plus the expense and time of moving.
Except for workers basically just out of college and making a major upgrade in title and pay, I cannot see anyone moving for a new job unless there is a hard written contract with liquidated damages if fired/laid-off (and very tight specifications on being fired for cause).
Employers' behavior over the past several decades has simply eradicated any credibility they once had.
My last boss offered me a $30k/yr raise to move to a different country for a small promotion with no real path forward beyond that. I said, "no way... it would take 6 years (after income taxes) for me to pay for that move with the increase in salary, and the new country's higher income taxes."
A lot could be included in this, but let's make some specifics explicit: if you locked in housing costs in 2020, it's entirely credible that a move could involve a 50-100% increase on that front right now.
Remote work can have pros/cons but it's more or less a declaration of independence for both employees and employers from having to care about market-specific housing costs in general.
For people in relationships it also means both people being able to pursue a wide spectrum of changes in their careers without moving, and one person don't need their partner to make a sacrifice in their career to pursue change.
But with remote work relocation will be less of a necessity.
Usually all the fees are covered by the relocation benefits.
Number 2 is that I get my work & meetings done in the morning and can call it quits at lunch every day (and often do nothing Fridays).
Absolutely. I would never move for a job.
The housing market is simply insane right now. How is someone with a 3% mortgage going to be willing to move if it means their monthly payment will double for about the same amount of house? This is a complete logical, rational decision. But the framing in the title "Americans have never been so unwilling ..." plays right into the "nobody wants to work anymore" BS. The current economic conditions have just made it extremely stupid to relocate for a job in most situations.
You have to be a moron to move right now unless you have to. Even a sideways move to an equivalent value house might be $50k of extra interest per year out the door. $50k you're putting into high yield investments right now. Finishing the mortgage in < 10 years versus starting over with a new 30 year mortgage at double the interest rate. Working 5 or 10 extra years before retiring just so you can move into that new house that you bought when prices were historically high.
Realtors are freaking out locally. Their game has changed drastically.
Typical interest rate fixes are much shorter in the UK though (2, 5, 3, 10 year fixes are the most common)
-You rent out your home and retain and continue to service your low interest rate mortgage.
-You relocate to new city and rent from someone else with a low interest rate mortgage (and thus, presumably, attractive rental terms).
I predict this will become an increasingly common solution (for the subset of homeowners who need to/want to relocate) and that some sort of new middleman/platform will emerge to serve this market (think longer term residential leases, better vetting of renters, etc)
That's it. It's not because of low pay, or noncompetitive benefits, or the strain of moving. All those things are relatively constant.
It's because tons of people either have a 2% mortgage that they will death grip to maturity, are in a rent controlled apartment (many places have ~5% raise caps that fall way short of the 20-50% rent increases seen), or just have a kind landlord that has kept rent stable.
Housing is severely fucked right now, and we're gonna be stuck like this until either more homes are built or people lose their jobs (forcing relocation to another house/rental).
While I'm sympathetic to many of the other arguments that "moving is hard while firing you is easy", that dynamic has existed for at least 25 years. The total insanity of the current housing market is the thing that is relatively new.
The declining transaction volume is more likely due to forward-looking expectations on prices. People can afford it, they're simply opting out of eating the additional costs.
Rates are still low, historically. But as they are moving up from very low, the increases are huge, percentage-wise. Most of the reason home prices have inflated so much in the last decade or two is that borrowing has been very cheap.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tracking-mortgage-rates-1970s...
If rates return to their historical averages, we may see home prices deflating or at least not increasing for a while.
I'm at 2.8%, paying $1100/mo on a 15-year $130k mortgage.
I got lucky. I feel bad for my friends and relatives who did not join the market at the right time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/briefing/cities-yimby-exo...
- people worked for "the company" for years if not their entire careers
- there was little to no fear that you'd get laid off after the move
- the company paid your relocation expenses, perhaps also bought your old house so you would not have to deal with selling it.
- your wife (probably) was a homemaker and did not have to worry about finding a new job.
- kids had to go to a new school and make new friends. Tough luck, kids didn't dictate what parents decided to do.
I said this somewhere else in the thread but repeating here - remote work is only a short term solution and a big long term threat. Once all the tools are processes are established to deal with remote work, your job will be instantly shipped to a cheaper country - Canada, Latin America, Eastern Europe or India. American workers should realize that remote work is not going to be like 2020-21 forever. Shareholder class is ruthless.
Everybody’s talking about money, as if they’re $100k away from uprooting and setting up shop somewhere else, but like - why? What’s so bad about the place you’re at?
All my friends are here. All my favorite things are here. It’s beautiful here. My family is here. Why would I want to live somewhere else?
I bought a house here, yes it was a good investment, yes I’m holding onto my low interest rate for dear life, but - the reason I bought a house here in the first place is because I didn’t want to be anywhere else. If I wanted to live in Seattle or LA or NYC then I’d have moved there a long time ago - I’m certainly not going to do it now, for work, of all things.
It's not a good system, but it's how it's worked for awhile now.
So price and growth is everything, because people don't want to be working when they're 80 yrs+.
It's not like the past where great retirement benefits were commonplace.
But where do you live after you sell your house? By that point it’s likely you’ve paid off your mortgage, so renting means you now have more money going out each month. Or you buy another house and there goes all your profit. You can downsize, I guess? Not everyone wants to do that, or not everyone lives in a house you can downsize from (ie it may already be small.)
I share your view: I have a group of close friends and a wider network of fun people that I cherish. It's probably the only thing keeping me from exercising my dual citizenship and moving to Europe to have a chance at a decent life away from such obscene rat-race-driven market dynamics.
My husband and I live in Texas as a gay married couple and have "exit criteria" where we'd leave if marriage were threatened, which is in the official platform of the party that controls every branch of government here. My extended family in different generations have left 2 different countries during various stages of dictatorship and unrest, so they are also light-footed despite loving where they currently live.
The higher paycheck, properly managed, can often buy you the freedom to exit a perilous situation for you and your loved ones. I can understand why some people prefer the high pay over a particular living situation, even if it's not for me. I'm choosing to set up roots where I am and be optimistic about the future, but I'm lucky enough to have an actionable exit plan for my family should the need arise.
I agree with you, but people are talking about money because in this context it's likely money that would be (hypothetically) motivating the move in the first place.
I've been approached by recruiters trying to hire developers in smaller communities. I know it is hard for them when this is the only employer (outside of retail or fast food) in that "city" because if things don't turn out, you have to move. Moving is expensive. When you're in your early 20s, everything fits in the back of a pickup truck. If you have family, then things get complicated enough that relocation becomes a large project.
To me, that's not the big barrier. The social/emotional cost of relocation, along with the risk of job loss, is the main driver.
If I sold my house right now, I’d realize a $150k loss + have to pay double the mortgage rate. I’ve never had a relo package above $50k ($37k after tax)
Begin crazy tinfoil hat rant...
Companies have been driven by short term returns for so long that they've completely eroded the trust of everyone.
For the last 40 years companies have been renaming compensation as "benefits" and then reducing those "benefits" under the guise of tightening the belt so they can survive the endless wave of recessions. They have gradually whittled down and eliminated almost all forms of compensation at all levels. Pensions became matching retirement plans, then matching up to 10%, 8%, 6%, and 4%. Healthcare use to be free to employees, now it's paid and the cost goes up significantly every year. Companies sold their offices and moved into leased properties where employees pay for parking but got a stipend until a subsequent recession eliminated that stipend.
These cuts have all been gradual over the decades and new people entering the work force are unaware and assume this is how it's always been and don't question it. At the same time older employees are forced to accept the concessions because they're minor and it's easier to take a minor cut in compensation than find a new job.
We have reached the point where most employees are no longer fairly compensated for their work and have no sense of job security or loyalty. The pandemic amplified this because it forced businesses to enact policies they claimed would be damaging AND then miraculously reported record productivity and profits. Now they're trying to roll back those policies. Employees see long commutes and increased expenses for not real benefit and are rejecting it.
So why the rollback? Most of this rollback is being driven by Private Equity firms who are heavily invested in commercial rel-estate and without staff in offices that rel-estate is tanking. These firms have been purchasing private companies and then steering them to lease properties they own for decades. This is also why Private Equity started investing in residential rel-estate, they're double dipping. If employees have to go into the office then they need to live near that office.
Post pandemic, these companies reported record profits but those gains are dwindling. To maintain these gains they've driven inflation to the breaking point. But inflation isn't sustainable so it's back to cutting costs. What's the biggest cost? Employees and with record low unemployment you have high wages. So now we have layoffs as a way to sabotage the labor market and drive down costs.
This is just part of the cycle the rich use to extract wealth from us.
And then you proceed to describe the exact situation that has been unfolding. Capital always seeks to achieve the highest returns possible by any means necessary. All of these things are just the logical steps a party interested in profit above everything else would take. No conspiracies needed, just cold brutal profit seeking behavior.
I agree that a lot of the pressure for the return to office is coming from investment firms that risk losing their shirt in commercial real estate if it doesn't happen. These firms have a lot of influence at the top of major companies. There seems to be a battle underway between the working class and the investment/management class over remote work long term. It is interesting to watch.
Not only that, but also to maximise control over employees. Companies want powerless employees, even if that means a bit (not a lot) less profits now.
Deleted Comment
Citation? Maybe for lots of jobs that require unique skills, but the average office drone isn't getting relocation expenses.
If I were to buy a new comparable house, I would pay double the mortgage rate.
The highest relo package post tax I’ve received is $32k ($50k pretax, but in California)
That way firms that aren't sure about relocating someone will not do it. Firms with some confidence in their business will not have a problem.
Boomers put up with this shit. Every other generation is actually prioritizing quality of life long term.
Constantly relocating generally isn't fun, even if it's paid for.
This isn’t why they do it. Getting the vote of that bumfuck district’s Congressperson, who is safely gerrymandered and thus tenured and on powerful committees, is.
I have laughed off more than few recruiters, all who have tried and failed to hire for a somewhat niche IT job an hour north of Grand Rapids, MI over the last year
1. Friends
2. Learning a new city, where is the good pizza, where is the gym, etc for your context
3. Shifting to local cultural norms, like tailgating (both on the highway and at footbal) is just a way of life in Austin, TX.
4. the nature of nesting, converting a building/house into "home", spending weeks or months adjusting to the new surroundings for sleep[1]
5. changing your mailing address on dozens of accounts, drivers license, insurance etc.
6. Finding a new doctor/accountant (and the multistate complexity)
It's actually a wonder we're as mobile as we are when you enumerate the barriers.
What did I miss?
[1]: https://www.ergoflex.co.uk/blog/category/sleep-research/how-... this was the best article i could find quickly, but I seem to recall the effect actually lasts months. Granted this happens when you move locally too.