
UK: The Great Migration South - aries1980
https://blog.internavenue.com/data-insights/the-great-migration-south/
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iDemonix
As a 25-year old that lived in Nottingham, studied in Newcastle and moved to
Oxford to work as a Systems Engineer, this article is interesting, but it can
simply be summed up as London and the South in general is where the money is.

I went away to study simply to have some freedom and it was great. I would
have happily moved back to Nottingham to live and work, but there were just no
jobs in my field. I finished uni with a 1st with Hons. and had some good
background (jobs, published parts of some small books etc.) After months of
searching, I got only one or two offers in Nottingham and one was for £16k. It
wasn't until I expanded my search to the south that I finally started getting
better offers and accepted one of £26k + bonus.

Truth is, I was simply open to moving anywhere (like most grads), that means
you just send out a load of CVs and see where comes back to you. Because a
majority of big businesses are based in the South, there are more large
companies that will make you good offers. In the north there's nowhere near as
many businesses, so the likelihood of getting a good offer is slim when you're
applying to the south as well.

Something annoying is that the higher salaries are usually where higher priced
rent/houses are, obviously because the salary will reflect the price of living
in that area. In my mind, this means it can only ever get worse: the price of
living keeps increasing which means salaries will keep having to rise to
match, which means more grads flock to the area making it pricier and
decreasing the price (or giving a lower increase rate) to the North as it
becomes less desirable.

Maybe eventually we'll all just live in the south and the north can finally
just be for farming.

~~~
ukoki
> In my mind, this means it can only ever get worse: the price of living keeps
> increasing which means salaries will keep having to rise to match

There is the opposite effect too: As salaries rise in an area to match living
costs, other areas become comparatively cheaper. So as salaries go up in
London, companies have more and more incentive to set up offices or relocate
to places with lower staffing costs.

~~~
Gustomaximus
This is especially viable in a smaller region like UK. Even if your at the
other end of UK its realistic to do day trips to London for meetings, and
would likely be cost effective for business if these are not overly regular.

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lifeisstillgood
In the excellent A16Z podcast, dotcom veteran Martha Lane-Fox suggested that
as England (and kind of UK) had same population as the Tokyo metro area, then
we are less a country and more just a large Asian city / metro area.

This probably is a good way of looking at it.

Yes London and the South East are a form of black hole sucking all the people,
investment etc from the rest of the U.K. However are we combating this with
massive transport investments, with superb connectivity infrastructure and
taxation policy.

No of course not. Because any attempt to fix this will cut the value of
housing in the south east, impoverishing millions of registered voters.

(Overly cynical, yes. There are attempts to redress the balance but nothing
like the scale needed)

Edit: actually I think are major hope lies not in making commute times
shorter, but in massively pushing remote working as a viable option. Taxation
and investment policy should focus on this. Everything from domestic housing
regulations onwards should have this clear goal.

~~~
phatfish
I'm a registered voter and would happily vote for polices that resulted in
lower house prices. They way it's going it will be the few with their property
portfolios against the many renters.

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tomp
I wonder how much the answer to _" where do you want to work"_ correlates with
the answer to _" where do you think salaries are the highest"_ or _" where are
your lifetime savings (taking promotions and cost of living into account) the
highest"_... My guess would be - _a lot_!

Furthermore, I would dare suggest that correlation implies causation... _the
other way around_! I.e. if the companies outside of London started offering
higher salaries or better career opportunities, more people would work for
such companies. The same solution applies to the alleged shortage of software
engineers that (some) companies experience.

~~~
iDemonix
I commented below, I agree with this completely. Graduates are drawn to where
the money is, it's not students moving to London that's causing the migration,
it's jobs bringing them here.

~~~
harryf
So the next question to ask is "why are the jobs here?". Parallel to that its
worth wondering why Britains second largest city Birmingham is not also an
attractive center; in fact when was the last time you heard of Birmingham?

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leonroy
I think as much as where you want to work is where you want to live. I know
they seem as if they go hand in hand but longer term I think where you want to
live is a stronger determinant. That factor is sadly not always rational and
IMO depends a lot on the massive mindshare cities like London have.

For example, in Silicon Valley new workers are expressing a preference for San
Francisco over San Jose and its neighboring towns. Here in the UK we also see
the massive draw a very diverse and culturally rich city like London has over
say Birmingham which whilst a great city just cannot compete as far as
mindshare goes for new graduates.

