Evening Must-Read: Peter Orszag: Americans Are No Longer Moving to Opportunity

Peter Orszag: Why Have Americans Stopped Moving?: “Americans are much less mobile than we think…

…Almost 70 percent of us who were born in the U.S. still live in the state of our birth, as only 1.5 percent of population moves across state borders [each year], a rate lower even than that of our parents. When we do move, it is… [to] the sun… [for] housing… [but] the biggest draw… is a job…. In the late 1980s, about 3 percent of Americans moved to a new state each year…. Raven Molloy… Christopher Smith… and Abigail Wozniak… find a strong link between lessening interstate migration and downward trends in the share of workers who move from job to job. And… changing employers no longer leads to as much gain in wages…. One troubling possibility is that it may be a decline in dynamism in the U.S. economy. A more auspicious explanation is that workers are increasingly able to find an ideal employer early in their careers…