Although unemployment in the U.S. remains high, some companies report difficulties finding skilled workers, as I noted in an earlier post. One problem may be that people—especially young people—are unwilling to move to where their skills might be needed, a point that's suggested in a New York Times column by Todd G. Buchholz, author of “Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race,” and Victoria Buchholz, a student at Cambridge University.
“Americans are supposed to be mobile and even pushy,” they write. “In The Grapes of Wrath, young Tom Joad loads up his jalopy with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl for sun-kissed California.”
Since the 1980s, they write, the likelihood of people in their twenties moving to another state has declined 40%, and the percentage of 18-year-olds having driver's licenses has fallen from 80% to 65%. Even bicycle sales have declined since 2000. “Today’s generation is literally going nowhere,” they say. “This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about.”
The Buchholzes quote John Della Volpe, who directs polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, as saying that young people report wanting to stay connected with their hometowns, which might be laudable, although it can hinder economic opportunity. They write, “For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate.”
The Buchholzes suggest that Facebook may be to blame—they cite Michael Sivak, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, saying that young people spending more time on the Internet delay getting their driver's licenses. The good news is they are not driving while checking out Facebook on a mobile device.
But the Buchholzes see a worrisome trend: “…kids who grow up during tough economic times…tend to believe that luck plays a bigger role in their success, which breeds complacency. 'Young people raised during recessions end up less entrepreneurial and less willing to leave home because they believe that luck counts more than effort,' said Paola Giuliano, an economist at U.C.L.A.’s Anderson School of Management. A bad economy can boost a person’s weighting of luck by 20 percent, Ms. Giuliano found.”
Hence the popularity of the adjective “random,” as applied without statistical significance to people and objects.
A dampening of entrepreneurial spirit is a serious problem, but lack of mobility of the type the Buchholzes comment on can be overcome. With the prevalence of broadband Internet, mobile devices, and cloud computing, young people in their hometowns can project their skills to where they are needed—provided they have something to offer that offshore competitors don't.
It's also worth remembering that California did not turn out to be the paradise the Joads had expected.