Your anecdote is not representative of broader trends. Economic growth continues to be concentrated in a few metros, where housing prices are skyrocketing. My lead at my previous job had kids and wanted to buy a house in the Bay Area for his parents to let them be closer to grandkids, but prices prevented this. WFH may have temporarily enabled more flexibility of location, but that seems to be diminishing.
you didn't contradict his point, you added support for it. Your lead is making a choice - pay / company over family / life. There is a cost to chasing TC (total compensation).
It sounded to me that the previous poster's point is that the tradeoff between economic opportunities and moving away from grandparents is less prevalent. My anecdote (and census data in another reply) is how someone chose to stay in an economically strong metro despite the fact that this meant grandparents couldn't live near children. People are still often prioritizing economic opportunities over proximity to family.
I don't deny that this is a choice, I'm contesting whether this tradeoff had diminished outside of WFH situations.
The choice is not so simple as it also involves volatility of future income, for which it very well could be better for your family for you to move to an economically burgeoning place.
In an up or out world, there is a cost to not chasing TC too.
I think you're talking past the folks upstream because they are talking about "tradeoffs" and you are talking about "not so simple."
The point is simply that if you pick up and move every time you can get a raise, you are going to end up far from family and thus have that problem. But not doing that has become a more viable choice lately, especially once you understand the downsides of being far from fam ~ what we're talking about here.
// Your anecdote is not representative of broader trends.
The trend is that MORE people are allowing themselves to be closer to family, not that everyone does it now. Sometimes the tradeoffs are still painful - but often less so than before.
EG: if your lead REALLY wanted to be closer to parents, they can try rearrange other things (eg where they work) over time.
>Economic growth continues to be concentrated in a few metros
Doesn’t that actually prove the op’s point? People are not moving away from the metros in which their families are, so of course the largest metros would grow larger.
Personally I am very very hesitant to move cities for an economic opportunity. And that is entirely for financial reasons; if something happens to me, at least I can easily move back in with my parents.
> People are not moving away from the metros in which their families are...
That's assuming people's parents are already in the desirable metros, which is often not the case. These metros are experiencing a net increase from migration (except during COVID), so more people are moving in than out. Internal migration is disproportionately done by young people, so parents or aspiring parents of young children are likely moving away from grandparents. The "I have to move to NYC to get a job" ethos remains strong, though there was a pronounced drop during COVID young people are still much more likely to move than other demographics and their destinations are primarily the large cities: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/07/theres-no-pla...
