Labor mobility is such an important topic that even strategy games incorporate it now. We also saw it in historical contexts like serfdom and other policies like it. Limited mobility can stagnant not just a local economy but the macro one as well if it widespread enough. Great post as always.
Aside from that, I think the two likeliest candidates are some of which you mentioned: 1. Dual income households and 2. Geographic sorting by education.
On the second one, it looks like the lowest quartile earners saw the strongest dip. It makes sense given that jobs that don't require an education are pretty versatile and generally needed in urban and rural communities. That geographic ubiquity doesn't really apply as much to people with degrees. That might be why the gap in moving percentage isn't as large now. I imagine the gap still exists due to the stability of higher earning jobs.
The region I live in has experienced significant decline as good‑paying jobs vanished with the collapse of the coal industry. Nothing has emerged to replace that economic foundation, leaving the area struggling. As the tax base shrinks and the population continues to decline, communities are facing school closures, consolidation, and reduced public services.
This is a very insightful article. As I have spent more time in the U.S., the contrast with my home country, Mexico, has become increasingly clear from a macro-labor perspective. In Mexico, labor adjustment tends to occur less through geographic mobility across regions and more through movement between the formal and informal sectors, reflecting the country’s dual labor market structure. In both contexts, however, the underlying pattern is similar: economies find alternative margins of adjustment when frictions constrain mobility along a particular dimension.
As a soon to be graduate, the decline in overall opportunity makes taking the risk of leaving my home that much more intimidating. Do you think an issue like this becomes even more apparent in the next few years with the lack of wage growth and increased housing costs?
Seems to me not so hard in principle -- politics is different. The US has one of the lowest Active Labor Market Policies in the OECD -- that is, among the least government funding for worker education/reeducation for workers leaving shrinking industries (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://tuac.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/TUAC-Policy-brief_Time-to-activate-labour-market-policies.pdf). Neoliberals in the US pulled the idea out of their ideologies that workers would magically readjust to changing patterns of trade and technology (tech has actually had the greater effect) by relying on "economic law" instead of studying the actual behavior of workers. Other OECD countries fund ALMP more generously. There is more to it than that, of course -- France subsidizes agriculture too much, many worker-oriented programs in Europe are left-politicized and inefficient, the rural/urban divide is intractable, etc -- yet the core idea of helping out-of-work workers train for new industries is sensible. In the US we have the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA), but it is under-funded and under-publicized. Community Colleges are doing some of that work with state assistance and some success (https://www.areadevelopment.com/top-states-for-doing-business/q3-2023/2023-top-states-workforce-development-programs.shtml#:~:text=Georgia%20sits%20atop%20the%20list,attract%20those%20businesses%20to%20Georgia.).
Labor mobility is such an important topic that even strategy games incorporate it now. We also saw it in historical contexts like serfdom and other policies like it. Limited mobility can stagnant not just a local economy but the macro one as well if it widespread enough. Great post as always.
I would love to see the trend pre-Internet.
Aside from that, I think the two likeliest candidates are some of which you mentioned: 1. Dual income households and 2. Geographic sorting by education.
On the second one, it looks like the lowest quartile earners saw the strongest dip. It makes sense given that jobs that don't require an education are pretty versatile and generally needed in urban and rural communities. That geographic ubiquity doesn't really apply as much to people with degrees. That might be why the gap in moving percentage isn't as large now. I imagine the gap still exists due to the stability of higher earning jobs.
The region I live in has experienced significant decline as good‑paying jobs vanished with the collapse of the coal industry. Nothing has emerged to replace that economic foundation, leaving the area struggling. As the tax base shrinks and the population continues to decline, communities are facing school closures, consolidation, and reduced public services.
This is a very insightful article. As I have spent more time in the U.S., the contrast with my home country, Mexico, has become increasingly clear from a macro-labor perspective. In Mexico, labor adjustment tends to occur less through geographic mobility across regions and more through movement between the formal and informal sectors, reflecting the country’s dual labor market structure. In both contexts, however, the underlying pattern is similar: economies find alternative margins of adjustment when frictions constrain mobility along a particular dimension.
As a soon to be graduate, the decline in overall opportunity makes taking the risk of leaving my home that much more intimidating. Do you think an issue like this becomes even more apparent in the next few years with the lack of wage growth and increased housing costs?
Seems to me not so hard in principle -- politics is different. The US has one of the lowest Active Labor Market Policies in the OECD -- that is, among the least government funding for worker education/reeducation for workers leaving shrinking industries (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://tuac.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/TUAC-Policy-brief_Time-to-activate-labour-market-policies.pdf). Neoliberals in the US pulled the idea out of their ideologies that workers would magically readjust to changing patterns of trade and technology (tech has actually had the greater effect) by relying on "economic law" instead of studying the actual behavior of workers. Other OECD countries fund ALMP more generously. There is more to it than that, of course -- France subsidizes agriculture too much, many worker-oriented programs in Europe are left-politicized and inefficient, the rural/urban divide is intractable, etc -- yet the core idea of helping out-of-work workers train for new industries is sensible. In the US we have the Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA), but it is under-funded and under-publicized. Community Colleges are doing some of that work with state assistance and some success (https://www.areadevelopment.com/top-states-for-doing-business/q3-2023/2023-top-states-workforce-development-programs.shtml#:~:text=Georgia%20sits%20atop%20the%20list,attract%20those%20businesses%20to%20Georgia.).