Americans are moving at half the rate they used to — why?

According to yearly figures from the Current Population Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau and reported in The Wall Street Journal last week, domestic migration rates are hovering near all-time recorded lows after just 7.9% of Americans switched towns or cities last year. That’s fewer than half of the 16.7% who were on the move in 1994, as the share of people relocating even within the same county plummeted from 10.4% 30 years ago to a little over 4% now.

So, what happened?

Homeowners being “locked in” to their current houses isn’t helping, as the prospect of trading in the generous mortgage rate they may have picked up around the pandemic for the current ~7% level proves, understandably, unappealing. But mortgage rates were high in the past too, suggesting more fundamental influences are also at play.

Technology, meanwhile, has made the ability to work remotely more feasible, fraying the cord that required people to move to get closer to their office jobs. Disproportionately higher rents in the likes of LA, New York, and Miami may also be discouraging people from moving to some of America’s most sought-after cities.

Furthermore, research suggests that wage differentials between states have generally been getting smaller, a megatrend that’s been evident in the US since the late 1800s, reducing the incentive to move in some cases. It’s rarely now a local labor market — often it’s a national, or even an international, one.

See the full article here.