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American families are accustomed to settling in faraway places, which has been a national phenomenon. Decades of data, including a more recent Gallup study, characterizes the US as one of the most geographically mobile countries in the world. "About one in four US adults(24 percent) has reported moving within the country in the past five years." the reported noted. With the exception of Finns(23 percent) and Norwegians(22 percent), Americans move considerably more than their European peers.
Though some may move for love or family, the major reason why Americans choose to move around is, unsurprisingly, related to work. Citing data from the Current Population Survey, a post on the blog of the New York Fed noted that between 1998 and 2013, "slightly more than half of interstate(州际的) migrants said they moved for employmentrelated reasons—a category that includes moves undertaken for new jobs, job transfers, and easier commutes(通勤)."
The seeking of opportunity, particularly for an immigrant nation, is a national mythology(神话) as well as an emotional attachment to work. A new working paper analyzed by Ben Steverman at Bloomberg suggests that workers in the US now" put in almost 25 percent more hours than Europeans" in a given year. This figure has steadily risen since the 1970s, when the hours logged by workers in Western Europe and the US were roughly the same.
There are, of course, some internal factors. The US is much vaster than most European countries, plus it boasts(拥有) a common language. It is considered to be a sign of an efficient labor market that US workers can be persuaded to move to regions where there is a steady growth in jobs, such as the Sun Belt in recent years. And while American workers often have fewer labor protections than their European counterparts, as a report by the World Bank noted in 2012, American "labor laws give employers the power to fire, hire, or relocate(重新安置) workers according to their needs", a flexibility that is thought to aid economic growth. The World Band report added that the occupation of the average US employee in 2006 was 4 years, compared to 10 years in the European Union.
Nevertheless, while Americans remain excessively mobile, FaithKarahan and Darious Li at the New York Fed are the latest to note that US workers are moving around less than before. During the 1980s, 3 percent of workingage Americans relocated to a different state each year; that figure had been cut in half by 2010." While part of the decline can be attributed to the Great Recession," the authors suggest," thisphenomenon took place over the course of several decades and is not necessarily related to the economic conditions."
So what accounts for this phenomenon? A roundup of theories by Brad Plumer at The Washington Post included the aging of the US workforce, the further rise of twoincome households, the burdens of real estate, evolving workplace culture, as well as the flat line of wages, which makes moving away for a job, on average, a less rewarding financial proposition.
Karahan and Li put much stock in the effects of an aging workforce, to which they attribute at least half of the decline in interstate migration. "In short, a young individual today is moving less than a young person did in the 1980s because of the higher presence of older workers," they write, suggesting that employers have shifted their employment tactics(策略) to adapt to the changing demographics(人口统计数据) of the workforce. Needless to say, movies about this era in American life, in which fewer people set out to start lives in wideranging places, will probably be much less exciting.
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