Fast Locations and Slowing Labor Mobility

Abstract

Declining internal migration in the United States is driven by increasing home attachment in locations with initially high rates of population turnover. These "fast" locations were the population growth destinations of the 20th century, where home attachments were low, but have increased as regional population growth has converged. Using a novel measure of attachment, this paper estimates a structural model of migration that distinguishes moving frictions from home utility. Simulations quantify candidate explanations of the decline. Rising home attachment accounts for most of the decline not attributable to population aging, and its effect is consistent with the observed spatial pattern.

Labor Market Frictions and Moving Costs of the Employed and Unemployed

“…This process is repeated for earnings and employment probabilities. Constructing the counterfactuals in this way allows me to hold fixed city characteristics, which turn out to be important determinants of migration behavior (Coate and Mangum, 2019).…”

Divisive jobs: three facets of risk, precarity, and redistribution

“…At the other end, insufficient labour mobility when local firms relocate elsewhere may explain spatial mismatches between unemployment and vacancies (Blanchard and Katz, 1992;Manning and Petrongolo, 2017). This happens, for example, due to declining internal migration related to workers' home attachment (Coate and Mangum, 2019). The result, a mismatch between workers skills and demand for that skill, local skills remoteness, implies that if laid off, the workers have lower re-employment opportunities and at lower wage (Macaluso, 2017).…”

“…Even then, perceptions of unemployment risk may vary across individuals with the same objective risk of unemployment. This happens because subjective expectations reveal private information available to workers about subsequent realizations of job loss or re-employment (Dickerson and Green, 2012;Hendren, 2017), such as employer inflation expectations or home attachment (Coibion et al, 2020;Coate and Mangum, 2019).…”

Keeping in Motion or Staying Put: Internal Migration in the United States and China

“…Cities play a prominent role in migration patterns. "Fast locations"-those with high resident turnover-produced much of the United States' migration in the late 20th century as they experienced rapid growth [2]. These included metros such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Miami.…”

“…Internal migration is defined as geographic mobility patterns within a country or political unit. Whether, why, and where people relocate is partly determined by financial, occupational, social, cultural, and political reasons [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Similar considerations contribute to a diverse range of migration characteristics among countries, states, and municipalities.…”