The New York Times has some story about the percentage of people in this country moving going down. I think it’s a lot of hot air. A lot of times, people move because they find a bigger and better apartment, or they move to new houses or whatever. People moving across the country to find jobs are extremely small. Also it makes no mention that some people switch jobs and don’t move because they just telecommute. I mean, I know a guy who had a job in California and then quit and started a job in Florida. He never had to leave his house in Iowa for either job, he can do his entire job from home over the internet. So it seems to me that article didn’t mention a good reason for the number of moves going down.
Also, moving is expensive and some times frivolous. If you’re moving across the country, it requires renting a truck or trailer and putting all your stuff in there, and driving a lot and paying for gas along the way. Then if you’re renting you have to pay a security deposit and 1st months rent. Some people have to stay at a hotel before an apartment is available. Also you might have to sell an old house and buy a new one.
However, a lot of times, especially in the boom economy, people moved to bigger and bigger houses, bigger and nicer apartments, usually houses and apartments they didn’t really need. The easy mortgage credit during the boom period encouraged moving. I think the down swing in moving is just the result of people just wanting to stay put and not spend money they don’t need to, essentially people do their own sort of cost-benefit analysis, they find out it’ll cost more to move than the benefit from the job opportunities. If there are really good job opportunities needing employees in another part of the country, the word will get out and people will move there. I think the downswing in moving isn’t a bad thing. People will just find other things to spend money on.
Update Friday May 1, 2009 10:04 AM: Also I forgot to mention this here, but this whole thing is the broken window fallacy. The broken window theory is that if a kid goes around and breaks all the windows in town, then it’ll be good for the economy because people will have to buy new windows. The window guy will get a bunch of money and use it to buy stuff he needs. So the way this works here is that if people are moving, sometimes needlessly, the moving industry will make money and become wealthy, but if people aren’t moving or replacing broken windows it doesn’t mean they aren’t spending it on other stuff. So yeah, just thought I’d mention that.
