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The places most affected by remote workers’ moves around the USA

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  1. scojjac
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    Archived at: https://archive.is/vV73R Remote workers mainly left California, New York, and Chicago in favor of cities in Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They also headed for smaller vacation...

    Archived at: https://archive.is/vV73R

    Remote workers mainly left California, New York, and Chicago in favor of cities in Texas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They also headed for smaller vacation towns.

    They are able to make these moves, not only because their work situation is flexible, but because they tend to have much higher incomes than in-person workers. This is likely to have a negative affect on the tax base of those more expensive metro areas. But it also affects housing issues in the areas they're moving to.

    Anecdotally, Raleigh can't seem to build housing fast enough, and the housing that is built is "luxury", presumably for the high earners moving in. But it's not densely packed nor connected to destinations by public transportation. (I can't help but connect articles about income, moving, housing, and tax base to urban planning and development — an art which the United States seems to be offended by.)

    An interesting tidbit about prepandemic remote workers I hadn't thought about:

    Remote workers prepandemic were often taking a small pay cut for the accommodation, [Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom] said. They were more likely to be women, and to have caregiving responsibilities, disabilities or other considerations that necessitated working from home. During the pandemic, those rare accommodations became expected perks for many more workers.

    Much like post-war wealth increased mobility across the United States, people sorting themselves into higher income remote work seems to be increasing American mobility.

    Remote work has even driven new household formation (imagine two remote-working roommates now each needing a separate home).

    The article attributes whether this will continue or not to whether companies choose to embrace remote work or demand hybrid. I think the cat is out of the bag and that, if the work can be done remotely, companies will have to learn to accept remote work or be supplanted by those that do.

    But, Mr. [Adam] Ozimek [the chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group] cautioned, “we’re a long way off from the equilibrium there.”

    10 votes