
The US needs more flexible labor markets - jseliger
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2016/07/08-us-needs-more-flexible-labor-markets-nunn?cid=00900015020089101US0001-070801
======
superuser2
Other factors, possibly:

\- Signing a new lease costs a few thousand dollars (security deposit,
possibly several months' rent, etc). Or transaction costs, if you're a home
buyer. Americans across income levels are generally living paycheck-to-
paycheck [0] and would need to scale down their standard of living for at
least a few months to save enough money to move. It seems only elite jobs pay
relocation expenses.

\- Two-earner households are more common than in the 1970s; it's harder to
find two new jobs than just one.

\- People seem to be more concerned about school district quality, restricting
the amount of housing supply seen as viable. (I made this one up, apologies if
that's wrong).

\- Homes are bigger (by nearly 2x) and presumably have more stuff in them as
well [1], which increases the logistical difficulty and expense of moving.

[0]
[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b6a2)

[1][https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-
are-1000-sq...](https://www.aei.org/publication/todays-new-homes-
are-1000-square-feet-larger-than-in-1973-and-the-living-space-per-person-has-
doubled-over-last-40-years/)

~~~
bmurphy1976
> People seem to be more concerned about school district quality, restricting
> the amount of housing supply seen as viable. (I made this one up, apologies
> if that's wrong).

You are not wrong. We are in this exact position right now. We are likely
going to be forced to do an add on to our house which is too small (and all
the bs this entails). If we move, we lose the nice school district and
location. If we buy new in the same neighborhood we are house poor. If we buy
used we have a compromised house like we already own. If we tear down and
rebuild, we are house poor again and taxes go through the roof.

It sucks, there's no easy option and the school district is the most important
consideration by far.

~~~
tamana
Good school district is mostly a myth. A "good school" is mainly school whose
students come from successful families. You could raise your kids anywhere
reasonably safe and they'd do just as well as at a "good school" , as long
your family and your kids' friends maintain an ethic for education

~~~
bmurphy1976
Yeah I don't think so. I've got three kids to fund through college. It is
extraordinary important that we get this right. I know we could send them to
private school but there are tradeoffs just like with everything else. It's a
huge ugly balancing act.

~~~
orangecat
There is actually decent support for the GP's position. Unfortunately any
discussions of it tend to quickly hit taboo topics. See
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-
inc...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-
trap/), especially section IX.

------
carsongross
The US needs families, er, the labor pool to uproot out of communities[1], er,
be more flexible for the whims of global capital.

Why aren't you doing this, labor pool?

Sincerely,

The Managerial & Academic Classes

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ttxGMQOrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ttxGMQOrY)

~~~
cynicalkane
I really dislike comments like these. First, because of the reification of a
"class" as a villainous force which--we might imagine--can be defeated. This
is a very dangerous reification, because the ordinary dynamics of a
supply+demand economy become recast as a war of Good vs Evil.

But when your boss wants you to move, this (usually) isn't under direction of
a Global Capitalist Conspiracy, and when you decline for a local opportunity,
this isn't a victory for the Forces of Good. If we pretend that it is, we
completely lose the ability to 1) look at what really is happening; 2) ask who
it is good for and what the trade-offs are, and 3) fix it if there's something
wrong with 2).

For instance, the licensing issue brought up in TFA is a very real barrier for
poor workers who can't afford the training and licensing costs for career
advancement. Often those licenses are nearly meaningless. This is a valid
concern and one where labor market flexibility clearly favors the most
disadvantaged workers. In addition, site- or business-granular licensing
clearly favors capitalists as well. More generally, a lot of anti-worker
situations fall under the category of poor labor flexibility.

The second reason I dislike comments like the above is that they snarkily
express a popular emotion, and get the upvotes, but add nothing to the
conversation.

~~~
dtornabene
I personally dislike comments like yours as well? Is this fun? Class politics
is a very real thing, for better or worse. And smearing/confusing the parent
with cutesy Capital Letter Disdain seems fairly hypocritical, given your
protestation of "this adds nothing to the conversation". One can argue this or
that about macro policy, and I for one am not in a rush to brand "academics"
as a "class", but to rule out class as a dirty word seems a bit bizarre in a
post-piketty world (choosing the least likely to offend theorist of
generational wealth inequality).

------
lifeisstillgood
Oh for heavens sake. Why is it every time recession bites it's the poor bloody
workers that need to get their rights curtailed, their notice periods chopped,
their families spread over thousands of miles just to keep profits up.

Why can't the _companies_ start flexing !

Why can't we have we have more most jobs as remote work, office jobs that
don't demand 9-5. why can't they pay me more money for my "flexibility" \-
according to the article it's going to cost billions if I am not flexible, so
give me some of that. And non-compete clauses - yeah don't make me laugh.
Don't want me to compete with you. Pay me then!

Really almost all of these problems go away if the companies fork out gobs
more cash for their workers, or start getting realistic with how the social
contract has been ripped up so that the implied promise of cash in all the
years to come has to be paid now. Learn to do NPV calculations for the salary
in twenty years time you aren't going to pay me.

Workers need to move across country to get a job. Most people on HN could do
their job from a different continent.

Companies in the Bay Area would stop competing for the brightest SF residents
and have to compete with companies the world over.

I think that is the point - the labour market is the one market that has not
(yes, not) been globalised yet. Almost all companies hire within thirty miles
of the office doing the hiring.

Imagine if you could only get food, goods and services within a thirty mile
radius. Globalisation seems to be working for other things - roll on the
globalised labour market. Cough up boys.

Edit: added extra rant at no extra charge.

~~~
w0rd-driven
I've consistently thought this. As I'm working on the outskirts of Atlanta,
with some of the worst traffic in the country, I wonder why a job would
require I come to an office downtown or close. When I can do all of the same
work from my home, with one of the pilot gigabit internet rollouts by U-Verse.
I have better internet than my current employer, likely all of their locations
combined. Why pay office costs for at least my IT division much less the rest
of the company that can also by and large do the bulk of the work from their
home. I fortunately work from home on Fridays but even a few more days a week
of not driving would reduce stress levels considerably. I'm driving to an
office away from Atlanta so the commute isn't nearly as bad as it could be but
driving has just become insane, period. I know it's all #firstworldproblems
but I feel like even local-ish remote workers can be a solution. I understand
remote workers from another coutries probably gets dicey tax-wise but it would
it cost more than in the most prominant parts of the country?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Probably not helpful at all, but my commute is widely improved at the moment
because I use a coach service - bus / coach collects thirty people and drives
them into town. Strongly recommend it for anyone stuck driving.

No idea if such things exist in your location.

Not the point I was making at all but a good idea after all.

~~~
w0rd-driven
I haven't thought of that but it seems like a great idea. Basically like a
shuttle service? Here we have MARTA, buses and trains, but both add outrageous
commute times. There is a benefit to someone else doing the driving so you can
focus on either getting things done or just browsing the internet but that
wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a usual requirement that I be somewhere by
a certain time. When I work from home and say I run into a logical wall, I can
stop aimlessly looking at the screen and go feed the cats for instance while
still mentally churning through the problem. When feeding the cats is part of
my things-to-do-before-leaving-the-house routine, I purposefully push work
thoughts out of my brain because I'm in no way compensated for that time.

------
euroclydon
They left out home ownership. People own large houses, full of crap, with
large mortgages, and since sellers must compete with new inventory, they have
to stage their house, usually while living in them. With painting, upgrading
materials and flooring, you can easily be looking at having to put $10K - $15K
into a home to get top dollar back out. It's a daunting prospect, if you're
working, have kids, and especially if you've done it once before.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> It's a daunting prospect, if you're working, have kids, and especially if
> you've done it once before.

I don't understand that third one. Usually, having done something once before
makes it _less_ daunting the second time?

~~~
weaksauce
The first time you do it you probably underestimate the actual amount of work
it is. Second time you are probably weary from past experience.

~~~
yardie
First time you don't underestimate, you simply don't have a choice. Our first
place that we bought we had a budget. The banks approved us for a loan based
on our income. And even with that we were looking for fixer uppers in specific
areas because that is all we could afford.

Now we are older, have a bit of equity, more liquidity, and overall more
savvy. A fixer-upper is no longer in the cards. But it was an experience.

------
TulliusCicero
Another issue is that the areas with the strongest job markets (e.g. the bay
area) have exorbitant housing costs, constraining people (especially those
with kids or pets) from moving there, even if they'd be able to find a good
fit job-wise.

Some of that is inherent; you're always going to have costlier housing in
booming areas than ones that are economically depressed. But a lot of it, as
has been discussed here before, is due to restrictive zoning laws that make it
hard to match housing demand with housing supply.

~~~
atemerev
Once again — why everyone needs to be in Bay Area to work productively? From
the SF employers' perspective, if on the one side is "hire locally and pay
exorbitant salaries to cover exorbitant costs of rent and everything else",
and on the other is "hire remotely and get the best of both worlds", why the
first option is ever chosen?

~~~
TulliusCicero
There are logistical issues to distributed teams. It can definitely work, but
I think it's context dependent. It's not a panacea to high housing/labor
costs; if it was, you'd already see the big tech giants like
Google/Facebook/etc. predominately hiring in cheaper places, which they're not
doing.

~~~
atemerev
This is what I am asking. Why they are not doing it? And if there is a
compelling reason for FB/Google, is it valid for everyone else?

~~~
TulliusCicero
Coordinating teams remotely is harder (and gets harder the larger your company
is), and makes for slower software development. For highly profitable tech
companies, it's worth the premium to have people on-site.

------
ourmandave
So it's non-compete contracts and licensing that's stopping all those workers
in Indiana from moving to Mexico to continue working at Carrier? O_o

[http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470418449/moving-air-
condition...](http://www.npr.org/2016/03/14/470418449/moving-air-conditioning-
jobs-to-mexico-becomes-hot-campaign-issue)

------
sunstone
If by flexible you mean more union jobs then yes you're right.

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650086-salaries-
ric...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650086-salaries-rich-
countries-are-stagnating-even-growth-returns-and-politicians-are-paying)

------
Shivetya
Occupational licensing is the biggest job killer and one of the reasons why
the poor stay poor. It can cost more to become a hair dresser than an EMT all
because of licensing and schooling. Worse many licensed jobs explicitly
exclude felons which means many cannot even get a job on the outside that they
would otherwise qualify for. Call the indirect tax of mega proportions.

Entire industries are supported by this licensing and it really is more
pervasive than you would suspect. For something closer to home go look at the
issues Uber, Lyft, and such have had. All because heavily regulated industries
protect businesses established but not workers.

~~~
jernfrost
Obviously that depends on whether training and schooling is easily and cheaply
available or not. In the US this might surely create a problem for the poor,
but in e.g. Nordic countries (I am from Norway) there is usually massive
economic support available for retraining, school, university etc, so this
isn't really an issue. As long as getting into a school isn't a high barrier,
licensing could be positive in that it keeps a certain quality in a
profession.

Quite to the contrary I think many problems in American society is caused by
too lax standards. E.g. Prison guards and police in Norway receive years of
training compared to weeks or months in the US. A lot of that is about
deescalating situations, understanding mental illnesses, negotiating etc. E.g.
a Norwegian prison guard is more like a social worker than a gorilla with a
big stick.

A lot of issues are connected and can't be solved in isolation. E.g. why are
health care so expensive in the US? One factor is that many health care
professionals have a high wage. Why do they have such a high wage in the US
compare to many other countries? A common tradeoff is that higher risks
require higher rewards. You don't buy high risk stocks with low potential for
return. Nobody will risk getting into massive debt for medical school in the
US without the potential for a big reward. Thus the lack of cheap/free college
education in the US also helps drive up health care costs.

So when it comes to poor people, licensing, education, you have to look at the
whole "ecosystem".

------
vacri
The US has plenty of flexibility in the labour market. When I hear about
people moving city to get a job, Americans seem a lot more casual about it
(maybe not 'casual', maybe 'accepting') - there's a lot of mid-sized cities
there, and the local culture is fairly uniform in a given region. Moving to
the next city across is normal. When I hear Europeans or antipodeans talk
about moving city for a job, it's usually either extremely lucrative or as a
last resort.

Anecdata, impressions only, etc.

------
jernfrost
I would think a restriction in the US compared to e.g. Europe is that many
people in the US hold on to a particular job due to the health insurance they
have at that particular job. A second issue is mortgages. While that is a
problem in many European countries as well, some countries like Germany have a
much higher portion of the population renting. Moving is thus much less of an
economic risk, as you don't have the potential problem of moving from an area
with economic depression where you can't sell your house without a big loss.

