
Why Workers Without College Degrees Are Fleeing Big Cities - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/21/business/economy/migration-big-cities.html
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2819b
I can't help but think to myself "how does this person live here?" whenever I
interact with a service worker in SF, particularly one that doesn't appear to
be in school. It's not a healthy reflex but I have to admit I have that
thought all the time.

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
The more I think about SF the more I shudder. There's an interesting video
"How to Fix San Francisco" what a guy uses Google Maps to showcase the
structure of the town. It was eye opening. SF is jammed packed with people.
From the skyview it looks grey with streets and buildings. No nature, no
parks, nothing.

But why (serious question)? Other than A) Growing up there and B) Silicon
Valley bragging rights the city does not seem to have much going for it. Yet,
people still live there and pay a hefty price to do-so.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObkdErzqXy4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObkdErzqXy4)

~~~
UncleMeat
The city has excellent food, art, music, and other culture. In the suburbs I
can't go see a world class gallery of modern art. Or go see a musical. Or go
see live jazz. Or go to a bar that specializes in modern cocktails. It is also
a capital of activism and support for the LGBT community.

Cities aren't for everybody. Some people really want green spaces and SF
doesn't really offer much there but to think that there are no benefits is
just wrong.

~~~
jonhendry18
"The city has excellent food, art, music, and other culture. In the suburbs I
can't go see a world class gallery of modern art. Or go see a musical. Or go
see live jazz. Or go to a bar that specializes in modern cocktails. It is also
a capital of activism and support for the LGBT community."

Not for much longer, the way things are going.

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SolaceQuantum
This is an interesting statistical breakdown essentially saying that moving to
the cities for opportunity used to hold true but likely no longer does for
those without college degrees. Therefore it makes more economical sense for
people without college degrees to move out of high COL areas, as there is no
longer an income gain worth it anymore for them (broadly).

I fear this is a worrying sign that cities will eventually begin to lack
necessary labor to keep running.

~~~
sjg007
I think folks in the trades probably still do well. But the low end has
definitely become unaffordable. The housing situation in these cities in
untenable so now second tier cities will experience major growth. The Twin
Cities metro is one area which I think can sustain a differentiated jobs
economy and you can still find reasonable housing... that may not hold long
term though.. still there is a lot of land to develop.

~~~
hellisothers
Shhh don’t tell anybody about the Twin Cities!

~~~
lenticular
We used to say that in Seattle.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
We used to just tell people it rained here 400 days/year. And even then, it
was mostly to keep the Californians away.

Doesn’t the twin cities have snow and cold winters? They could use that to
similar effect.

~~~
war1025
That's just the entire Midwest :) It's a great place.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I've lived in Toledo, and I've heard the Twin Cities get colder than Fairbanks
in the winter. They have frozen lakes, the only thing they don't have is polar
bears.

~~~
war1025
I grew up in northern Iowa, so the Twin Cities were our closes major
metropolitan area. My mom's family is from 2 hours north of them. My wife's
parents both grew up even further north. It gets cold, but once it gets below
0F it all feels roughly the same. At that point there is no humidity in the
air, which is what really makes you cold to your bones.

I think the biggest thing people have to get used to is that there is roughly
a 120F temperature swing from January to August.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
One winter I was vacationing in Beijing, Changchun, and Haerbin. Beijing was
about -10C, cold I guess. Changchun was about -20C . I took a bus to Haerbin
and saw the mercury fall to -40C (they have digital thermometers at the front
on the long distance buses in NE China!). Anyways, there is a huge difference
between -10C and -40C, when I got back to Beijing, it felt fairly balmy.

~~~
war1025
Yea I wouldn't recommend doing anything other than hopping between buildings
or vehicles when it gets down to -40 (same in both C and F, which I think is
neat)

-10C is 14F, which I agree is a pretty nice day if you're properly outfitted.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You can actually do stuff in -40C, just wear a lot of clothes and don't expect
your digital camera to last very long when you are trying to take picture of
carved ice sculptures and ice bars, etc...

Honestly, the coldest winters I spent were in Southern China, even though it
was 5 to 10C out, no indoor heating really sucks and will beat you down
quickly.

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duxup
It will be interesting to see if this is an ebb and flow or a longer term
pattern.

>Many of the jobs that offered a leg up to those without a college background
no longer exist and won’t come back.

The jobs thing is interesting. I changed careers via a bootcamp (that's a
whole other topic but let's just assume they produce some portion of viable
candidates (like me!)), and I found a lot of jobs requiring lots of
experience, working with 8 frameworks / languages (at least) described as
"entry level"... and if you can't say you worked with all those things the
impression you're just out and they'd rather sit there looking for someone for
a year (giving HR and recruiters something to do I guess) than actually try
someone out.

It would be nice to see more jobs / companies open to hiring non traditional
type folks for say 6 months trail, reasonably well paid (obviously not the
salary for 8 languages / frameworks guy, and find people who can help to some
extent now, and later.

It could extend to even other areas of work with shorter term retraining and
reasonably paid, but still entry level type work.

~~~
ravenstine
Supposedly, more companies _used to_ hire people on a trial basis. That
probably went away because today's employees require a lot of HR overhead, and
businesses can get in trouble for alternatively hiring people as
contractors(if it appears they are treating the contractor like an employee).

~~~
cheerlessbog
The single most reliable source of good tech hires in my experience is
undergrad internships. It's a 3 month interview both ways with full pay and
benefits. If we could make that more commonplace for folks in mid career it
would likely increase diversity as well as reduce hiring misfires.

~~~
nostalgk
It does appear that a lot of employers are dependent on younger employees
interning before hiring them.

A few of my peers are working for the same company; the ones that interned
have quickly advanced in pay and position, and the ones that did not have felt
stifled and have not had a position change. The only difference between them
is a few years of age.

As someone who is looking around at the same companies, I can say it's
affected my decision to apply and accept offers.

------
esoterica
As least the article acknowledges that higher income individuals can do better
on expensive cities even after paying for housing. HN is full of smug LCOLers
who love brag about how much better they are doing than those SF losers
because their mortgage is only $2/month or whatever.

~~~
tych0
One thing I've never understood about this argument is: iPhones/Pixels are
$1000 no matter where you live. A new decent sedan is $25k no matter where you
live.

Even if housing is 20% of your income in both HCOL and LCOL and it seems
completely ridiculous to pay $500k * 20% and not ridiculous to pay $150k *
20%, you can still by more cars, phones, etc. with your remaining $500k * 80%.

This is ignoring the cost of consumables like food, etc. But I believe the
same argument applies.

~~~
icebraining
I think the argument is that comparable housing is not the same percentage of
your income is both areas - ie, people in a LCOL may be paying the same 20%,
but they live in a two-story house instead of a room or tiny apartment.

~~~
tych0
$100k/year rents you one hell of a nice apartment, though, right? It must be
competitive with whatever you can get in a LCOL area.

150k/500k were numbers I pulled out of the air for "well compensated
engineers" in L/HCOL. I absolutely agree that people who are not well
compensated are fucked. But the thing I've never understood is people who
_could_ make 500k by moving to the Bay Area arguing that they're better off
staying in a LCOL for purely financial reasons.

Now, note that I currently do not live in the Bay Area and have consistently
refused to move there for employment reasons, because there are other things
to value besides money. But I've definitely seen the argument made on a purely
financial basis, and I think it is misguided.

------
gniv
There is another dynamic here: Small cities are trying harder to attract
workers. Here is a nice writeup illustrating this:
[https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-land-is-your-
land](https://annehelen.substack.com/p/this-land-is-your-land)

------
40acres
There is an interesting flywheel effect going on in large productive cities,
gentrification is pushing out those previously impacted by white flight.
NIMBYs prevent dense suburbs, and we don't have adequate transportation for
lower income folks to efficiently commute to job centers, what's our plan for
folks without degrees? My prediction is a large increase in "welfare".

~~~
freehunter
The answer right now is exurbs. Big City gets too expensive to live in (or
doesn't have enough housing) so people move to the suburbs because they're
desirable and usually have a nice community, school district, and downtown of
their own. When the suburbs fill up or become too expensive, people move to
commuter towns (exurbs). Towns with no character of their own, no political
force, no real economic activity. The only thing they have going for them is a
quick and easy connection to the bigger city.

A few years ago I co-founded a company that provides services to Midwestern
exurban towns with the goal of turning them from just a commuter's bedroom
into places people might actually want to spend some time (and some money).
It's one of the hardest challenges I've ever taken on.

~~~
notfromhere
Can you give more details about this company?

~~~
freehunter
The company is called Citieo [1]. We work with tiny towns (usually less than
10k people, average is about 5500 residents) that have downtowns already built
but the majority of their population leaves to spend their money and their
time elsewhere. In our area (Midwest, very little public transport), our
exurbs are built on major roads instead of rail lines.

Our public-facing presence is a digital media outlet (website, app, facebook)
for each city we cover, but most of our work is done face-to-face with local
business owners, the Chamber of Commerce, and the city government. It's a very
small operation and we don't make a lot of money from it, but we think it's
important to try to save our towns and, in the age of toxic social media and
outlets like Next Door/Citizen/Neighbors, foster a real life community in your
real life downtown. Outdoor, face to face.

[1] [https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-
life](https://citieo.com/posts/citieo-real-life)

~~~
superjisan
That's awesome that you are doing that. Sounds like a worthy venture

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atemerev
That's odd. I live in Geneva, Switzerland, where everything is expensive.
College-educated people have huge salaries here, but it rises the cost of
labor accordingly. Dishwasher installation was about $400 cash, babysitters
take $20/hour. Nobody here will work for less. Why it isn't the case in SV?

~~~
marcosdumay
Because people in Switzerland are richer than in the US.

~~~
eloisant
I don't think tech workers in Silicon Valley are poorer than the Swiss. They
can afford $20/h daycare.

As far as the rest of the population... Well they'd be richer if they were
paid decent wages!

~~~
atemerev
We don’t have legal “minimal wage” here in Geneva (there are some other
cantons, which have it, but not us). There are certainly not enough jobs for
everybody here, and many other issues, but low wages somehow isn’t one of the
problems. I wonder how that works.

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squish78
Does the source of this article actually say that it's people without college
degrees who are leaving? The data only showed net migration, as far as I could
tell.

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linuxftw
> For the first time in at least a decade, 4,868 more people left King County,
> Wash. — Amazon’s home — than arrived from elsewhere in the country.

This statement lacks precision and is a poor way to open the article. It
implies that this is the only time that particular net change took place, not
a net-negative change. EG, maybe 2000 people left last year?

While one can certainly infer, it's poor style IMO.

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jamisteven
paywall.

~~~
gwbas1c
I wish we could downvote articles behind a paywall, like we can downvote
posts.

~~~
y-c-o-m-b
I disagree about the down votes, but I wouldn't mind seeing a [paywall] tag
next to the title.

Having said that, i'm using Chrome Incognito with uBlock Origin and Privacy
Badger extensions, i'm not getting any paywall on this article...

EDIT: Looks like there's a 10 article limit before the paywall kicks in,
that's why only some users are seeing it - they've run out the limit.

