How much of the decline in labor market fluidity is driven by the decline in geographic fluidity, and how much of the decline in geographic fluidity is driven by 2-income households? Especially when the two incomes are in different industries, the problem of trying to match 2 people in a new geographical location gets tough and the opportunity cost of 1 person requiring several months to find a new fit in a new location is large.
Intuitively, this would seem to be a big factor. I wonder what the trend is like in faculty mobility. I believe that there has been a large secular rise in the number of two-professor households, and unless at least one is a superstar, my guess is that mobility options are quite limited.
It was a big factor for my wife and me. Graduating from college in 2000 with degrees in chemical engineering and computer science, respectively, it was hard to find jobs in the same metro area. When her job moved from northern VA to Houston last year, we were fortunate that she found a job in her field, still in northern VA, within a few months. Otherwise we were looking at moving (probably big pay cuts for us both) or becoming a single-income family. It’s hard to change careers after 15 years of increasing specialization and responsibility as an engineer.
Cry me an effluent stream! 😉
A few years back one of the military services did a survey of departing officers to ask them why they were voluntarily resigning prior to retirement. One common answer was that officers today often enter into assortative marriages and their wives are more likely to be educated professionals, and often with licenses and credentials that only work in one state. It’s nearly impossible to stay on a typical career path in any field while having to pick up and move – often to remote bases with few job opportunities, and sometimes overseas – every few years. The end result is that many married officers must effectively forgo about half of their household income to remain in the military. For those with options, that’s a big straw to add to the camel’s already burdened back.
The fact that having a second person with super high education attainment is called “the two-body problem” says something.
I just turned down a recruiter this week for a job that would probably pay me up to 50% more in a city close to mine that we would actually like to live in because it wouldnt make sense for my wife to leave her job for anything she could find there. Good times!
Moves are an indication of an imbalance that a move addresses. The first guess of a reduction in mobility is a reduction of imbalance to exploit and better pricing of salaries with cost of living and more similarly distributed growth.
This big decrease for the 2 college educated couples is a real issue.
But for most “poor”, with only 1 worker, that shouldn’t be a problem. I doubt that unmarried folk have increased their mobility, and guess that they, too, have even slightly or greatly reduced their moving.
My (quite uninformed) understanding is that academia is one of the most telecommuter-friendly professions there is; outside of teaching obligations, no one much cares where you are on a day-to-day basis. My experience is limited primarily to law professors, but I know one who is tenured at a D.C. school but maintains her household in Wisconsin, and another who is an adjunct at a school in North Carolina but works primarily out of the D.C. office of a large firm–if one is willing to bite the bullet of regular travel, it would seem that while academia may not provide a great deal of job mobility, it has a comparatively weak demand on household location, which countervails that effect.
For at least 20 years, there has been a decline in the portion of households with 2 or 3 earners and an increase in the portion of households with 0 or 1 earner.
Table H-12
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/
I don’t think that really argues against the trend Kling is suggesting. It’s not that there are more two income couples, it is that there is more assortive mating and therefore more couples where the couple cannot easily move for one partner’s career, because it is not so easy for the other partner to find a job in the new city at a comparable income, and having comparable careers means it’s not a no brainer to move just because one partner can get a promotion (or avoid an income hit from a job loss). While the trend in two earner households limits how much this trend can be contributing to the loss of mobility, I don’t think it eliminates it as a potential contributing cause.
I think it’s definitely a contributing cause, along with divorced men and less often women not being able to move without losing access to their kids. I know these are two factors because I see it so often in my social and professional circle, but I suspect they are both relatively minor contributors.
Don’t underestimate the willingness of couples to commute to smooth the transition. My wife and I have discussed this as a plan if I have to change cities to find the right job. The one finding the job in the new city ranges ahead and lives cheap while the second job hunts and maintains the second income in the old city. You can take your time selling the house. Get to know the neighbourhoods. Move in the summer when the kids are out of school. Fly home weekends, that’s a lot less than the lost income from having one person quit too soon.
My in-laws are in their 70’s and both retired long ago, and yet they maintain an apartment in a city 4hrs from their primary home, because my father-in-law keeps getting contracts he can’t make himself turn down. He drives in, works four days, and drives home, about 30 weeks a year.
I have also had colleagues at a major airline that all jumped ship from a competitor together, and they all commuted across the country weekly, all living in the same community near their previous employer. Admittedly the flights were nearly free, but still, people do it.
I don’t know that I think changing cities is going to stop very many successful couples from getting things exactly as they want them. Cities tend to end up specializing somewhat. I think it’s more likely that once a couple establishes themselves as specialists in a city they have no reason to leave.
No doubt dual income is a factor, but also the divorce rate for those with kids is a factor. In shared custody, you lose access or become the “bad parent” if you move out of the area. I know several people who couldn’t take jobs out of state without serious negative consequences, such as the kid(s) can’t move without the both parents agreeing and that means one is now a holiday and summer parent.
Anyone that works for a school district or local government gets locked in pretty quickly. Moving and starting with another employer resets all of the seniority and retirement benefits.
This also leads to superstar cities like New York, Boston, DC, Dallas, and the Bay Area that are big enough for two career couples pulling ahead of second tier metro areas like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Hartford, and St. Louis that might only have enough good jobs for one of the couple.