The Indicator from Planet Money : NPR

ANNOUNCER: NPR.

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WAILIN WONG: This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I’m Wailin Wong. And I’m here with friend of the show, Stephan Bisaha, from the Gulf States Newsroom.

STEPHAN BISAHA: Good to be with you, Wailin, and especially happy to be here on jobs Friday.

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WONG: Yes, it is jobs Friday. And as you can maybe tell from our horn, it is a highly unusual jobs Friday.

BISAHA: Yeah. I cannot actually remember when we had a usual jobs Friday.

WONG: Oof, yes. We are in uncharted waters because the federal government is shut down. And a shut down government means no Friday jobs report.

BISAHA: Now, there are at least some other sources of jobs data, less comprehensive than what the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces, of course. But hey, you know, they’re actually getting released, so we’ll take it.

WONG: Right. We have the payroll company ADP and Revelio Labs, which maintains and sells its own workforce data. Revelio’s September jobs report said the US economy added about 60,000 jobs. And the company’s chief economist says, combine that with numbers from ADP, and the BLS likely would have come in around 38,000 jobs. So still some shaky signs for the job market.

BISAHA: Yeah. And the Revelio report also looks at state employment. And there’s some pretty big differences depending on where you live. Like, California gained about 25,000 jobs, while Texas lost 10,000. So with some parts of the country being more boom and others being more bust, you might imagine Americans packing up the U-Haul and chasing down those opportunities across state lines.

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WONG: But that’s actually not happening, at least not as much as it used to. In fact, we’re in the era of homebodies. Americans are moving at around half the rate they were 30 years ago.

BISAHA: So on today’s show, why are Americans moving at a record low and how that’s related to women getting better pay. Plus, a trip to Huntsville, Alabama. We’ll explain why after the break.

BISAHA: If there’s one thing you should know about Huntsville, Alabama, it’s sort of this federal workforce mecca in the South, especially when it comes to defense and space.

WONG: It’s the city that designed the Saturn V rockets that put the first man on the moon. And in more recent decades, tons of federal jobs and offices have moved to the city, like the Army Materiel Command, the Missile Defense Agency, and more than a thousand FBI jobs.

BISAHA: Now, that does not mean all those moves went smoothly, like in 2018. At the time, the FBI’s Finance and Facilities Division was based in DC. The agency called in all of its roughly 100 workers from that division into an auditorium to share the news. Sharonda Ware was working in DC at the time.

SHARONDA WARE: You know how they have these town halls, and, you know, there have been people lately who’ve been kind of, like, throwing rotten tomatoes, like, just really like, rah? That was what that was like.

WONG: So metaphorical tomatoes, but I can imagine the anger.

BISAHA: Yeah. They were not happy to be told they had to leave DC for Alabama.

WARE: And some people was like, no, I’m not, you know? And then there was some anger, and there was some people who resigned.

BISAHA: Sharonda personally was concerned about Alabama’s long history and reputation when it comes to race.

WARE: You know, especially as a Black woman, is this going to be a danger for my family or myself?

WONG: And for some workers, moving was just impossible.

WARE: Some people had, you know, shared custody arrangements, elderly parents they were taking care of. There were just reasons why they couldn’t do it.

BISAHA: Do you know, like, the percent of your division that decided to move to Huntsville?

WARE: If I were to guess, like, only 10% moved.

BISAHA: Oh, that’s small!

WARE: Yeah, it was.

WONG: That 10% number matches what the FBI told us in an email. About 10% to 30% of its staff in the past agreed to relocate to Huntsville.

BISAHA: And this concern about people not relocating popped up again for Huntsville. President Trump announced he’s moving Space Command there from Colorado Springs. Space Command’s job is coordinating military operations in space, like defending US satellites from attack.

WONG: The move to Huntsville has been talked about for years. And you can see those relocation worries in a report this year from the Defense Department Inspector General. It showed that command leadership worried a majority of its 1,000 civilian workers, contractors, and reservists might not relocate to Alabama.

BISAHA: And before you think this is all about workers rejecting the South, it is not. American workers across the country have become more and more reluctant to move across state lines over the last 30 years.

WONG: Urvi Neelakantan is a senior policy economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. She co-authored a brief about this moving decline. And she says she got interested in this topic because moving away has always been a big part of the American story.

URVI NEELAKANTAN: We just stopped seeing that. Like, such a traditional part of the life cycle is not happening anymore. And we really wanted to know why.

BISAHA: Depending on how you count, I think I’ve moved at least three times to different states for work.

WONG: I have, too, and one of those was international.

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BISAHA: Oh, you got me beat then.

WONG: But this was all, like, in my 20s before I had, you know, obligations that were tying me to a specific place, you know?

BISAHA: Yeah, that does help. And, you know, Urvi’s research did come up with a few reasons for the moving drop. One is that Americans have basically been more and more often sticking to certain parts of the country, based on things like industry and education. Like, college grads are more likely to stay in cities. Tech bros are hanging out in the Bay Area. And Huntsville has been this gathering spot for engineers.

WONG: You can also say the US is more politically sorted, too. A realtor.com survey found that over 40% of Americans said politics influence where they decide to live. And we’ve talked on the show before about how medical students, for example, are choosing not to apply for residencies in states with abortion restrictions.

BISAHA: Another surprise reason Urvi gives for Americans staying put is that women are working more, which might sound like a weird explanation, but hear us out. And imagine a husband and a wife. Husband works outside the house, wife stays home.

NEELAKANTAN: So a moving decision based on work is only based on one spouse’s job. Now, imagine that there are more women in the workplace. So now it’s a two-body problem.

WONG: And there are more marriages where both partners are working. That means moving for one person’s career might mean the other person having to give up their own. That is not an easy decision. So it makes sense those couples would be less likely to move.

BISAHA: It is a bit easier if one partner makes a lot more than the other. But that just leads us to another reason for the moving drop. The gender pay gap is closing.

WONG: The big caveat here is that median wages for women are still about 85% of what men get paid. But yes, that is better than in the ’90s, when it was more like 75%.

BISAHA: And if both parents are making similar salaries, how do you pick whose career gets prioritized? It might be easier just to stay put. And this all gets more complicated when you add a kid to the equation. I mean, you might want to stick close to the grandparents for that childcare support if both parents are working.

WONG: So there’s a lot on the con side of the moving decision list. And Urvi says there are also fewer pros, too, because when comparing similar jobs across different places, there isn’t as much of a difference as there used to be.

NEELAKANTAN: There’s less regional variation in wages and salaries.

WONG: Although, yes, New Yorkers still make a lot more on average than workers in Birmingham, Alabama.

BISAHA: Hey, though we do have better crawfish boils.

WONG: Oh, you do have New Yorkers beat there. [LAUGHS] But generally, Urvi points to research that says when comparing similar jobs between states, the salary gap has been shrinking.

NEELAKANTAN: It used to be that people would throng to places where prospects were better. But as places get more even, then there’s less of a pull, you know, to move to better opportunities, because now, you can get good jobs at where you live right now.

WONG: There’s also something interesting going on with remote work. You might remember a bunch of people moving because they had remote work possibilities in 2021. Now, today, people with flexible work arrangements can take a new job and stay put.

BISAHA: Of course, some people are still moving today, even if they’re doing it less.

WONG: Yeah. So let’s go back to Huntsville. The city is growing fast, and a big part of that is, it’s still relatively affordable. According to WalletHub, housing costs are about 30% lower than in Colorado Springs. That’s where Space Command is moving from.

BISAHA: And remember Sharonda Ware, the FBI worker who was told she needs to leave DC for Huntsville? Well, she ended up making that move. She still has some concerns about racism in Alabama, but she was won over by the state’s beautiful rivers and mountains and its culture.

WARE: To me, I feel like people are more willing to be like, good morning. You know, how are you? Oh, it’s raining out there. You know, just being able to talk to other people, that’s my– that’s how I am. So I just love to be able to do that with other people, too.

BISAHA: So that Southern hospitality got to you.

WARE: That part, yep.

BISAHA: Sharonda is no longer with the FBI. She took part in that federal deferred resignation program at the start of the year. And she’s deciding with her husband what they’re going to do next. One thing that’s not in the cards is moving again. Huntsville is home.

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WONG: This episode was produced by Julia Ritchey and engineered by Cena Loffredo. It was fact-checked by Corey Bridges. Kate Concannon is our show’s editor. And The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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