American Mobility at Record Lows

Jed Kolko, in one of his first posts as the new chief economist of Indeed, digs into data from the U.S. Census revealing that mobility—the kind where Americans move around the country for a variety of reasons—is at an all time low.

Would you move for a new job? Every year, about 1 in 9 Americans does. That may sound like a lot, but people in the US are actually much less mobile than they used to be. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, 1 in 6 Americans moved annually. Prior to the mid-1970s, it was closer to 1 in 5.

The latest data only deepens that trend, according to Kolko.

The latest Census data, hot off the virtual presses as of yesterday, reveal that overall American mobility hit a new low in the year leading up to March 2016. Over this past year, 11.2% of the population moved, a decline from 11.6% in 2015 and from 16.1% in 2000 — the lowest level since 1948, when the Census started reporting annual mobility rates.

Kolko details how a lack of mobility is bad for multiple sectors in the economy, in addition to comparing the different ways of quantifying mobility. For instance, there are jobs-related moves (which actually haven't changed much in recent years), housing-elated moves, family-related moves, cross-state moves, and within-county moves.