Thursday, March 28, 2024

Remote work sends people to the suburbs, not the Midwest

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Remote work is doing a lot of labor.

It is hoped that by giving women with children more flexibility and allowing them to continue working, the gender imbalance can be alleviated. Others believe this helps reduce commuting time, which in turn reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Employers see this as a way to save money on expensive office space, while employees want to be able to take advantage of cheap housing outside of big cities.

Some people suggest that remote workers who have recently left offices in large cities can move to troubled towns in the heartland and rejuvenate them, resulting in lucrative salaries and large expenditures.However, according to a new report, this is unlikely to happen Metropolitan Policy Plan of the Brookings Institution. People have not migrated from coastal cities to the Midwest in any meaningful way. In other words, remote workers will have a major impact on cities and beyond, from unemployment in the service industry to urban expansion.

We discussed with Mark Muro, an author of the report, senior researcher and policy director, what can and cannot be done remotely.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, this interview has been slightly edited.

Rani Mora

Many people are excited about the idea that remote work can help revitalize troubled areas of the country. What do people hope will happen?

Mark Muro

The idea is that talented, well-educated, and often technicians will go to various places, bring their human capital, bring their high-paying jobs, and only for those who are not only economically lost in many cases. Is struggling.

Rani Mora

What are we talking about here?

Mark Muro

We think of non-coastal, non-superstar metropolitan areas. You can think of the real inland states, you can think of the so-called eastern center, extending from the upper Midwest to the south, or the western center.

Rani Mora

Okay, but what does the data show? People really say, “Hey, I have a remote job, so now I am moving to Cleveland”?

Mark Muro

Many things are happening. People are walking around, but this is not exactly a sport that people want or expect. In the large coastal cities, there must be movements and outflows, but we are particularly talking about the Bay Area and New York City. In other places, compared with last year, the amount of exercise did not increase significantly.

Rani Mora

So people are leaving some of the largest subways. Where are they going to move?

Mark Muro

Interestingly, most of them moved to the suburbs. In most cases, they will not move to Wichita to save the heartland. They will either move further afield in the subway or move to a nearby county. So move to Alameda County in the New York area or counties near the Bay Area, and so on. And they are mostly short movements.

Finally, with the exception of New York City, the New York area and the Bay Area, most places have not moved much more than in previous years. This is a movement to the suburbs and even the outer suburbs, but it is still subject to the metropolis.

Rani Mora

Therefore, people from these big cities are migrating outward, creating this doughnut effect from the center of the big city, but they don’t necessarily move to the Midwest or some troubled areas of the country in a meaningful way.

Mark Muro

A small part of them are. We have carefully observed in the Bay Area: 700,000 people moved out of the Bay Area, and only 12,000 moved into 19 typical central areas. This is not the main thing that happened, let’s put it this way.

Rani Mora

As for small-scale relocation outside the city, is this just a question of uncertainty surrounding future work? For example, “My boss may change his mind next year and ask me to go back to the office. I can’t go too far”?

Mark Muro

I think this is a big factor-or mixed work, which means you have to come two days a week. That will limit where you can move. Another thing that is happening is that remote work is decreasing. In May a year ago, about 57% of professional workers were working remotely. In May this year it was 30%. I think it will fall further. It won’t drop all the time. But even remote work may not be as big as expected.

Rani Mora

What is the economic impact of having a large group of people sometimes work from home and carry out these small-scale relocations outside the city?

Mark Muro

On the bright side, maybe it can benefit the participation of the labor force, and maybe it can indeed improve people’s working conditions. On the downside, I think this is a contagion driver. I think this is bad for global warming. The impact near and inside the subway will be huge. Moving away from the central office area-what will happen to all the lunches and services provided in the city center? We will see urbanization centers in the suburbs. I think we will see sprawl and move to the suburbs.

Rani Mora

So remote work will not save the heartland. What will revitalize these places?

Mark Muro

In the end, no matter good or bad, only the foundation of economic development remains for the locality, which means more and more efforts to build digital capabilities and digital industries. This is about training. This is about being a good place to live. More important than ever is support for the family. It is really important to make it a good place to live and work. We do think that there are some federal policy ideas that may be helpful, including the creation of technology centers in the inland areas and large investments in local colleges, universities, labor, etc. But we still have a lot of work to do, and there are many things to be reversed.

Rani Mora

Why do technology companies locate offices in smaller but still quite large and popular cities?

Mark Muro

I think that in some ways, this is more real than the idea of ​​fleeing.I think large technology companies are providing better services to talents, rather than trying to get talents to come to places like the Bay Area. Therefore, the South — when they need to obtain a more diverse workforce when dealing with diversity and inclusion issues — is an incredible opportunity for them.

Rani Mora

You and I discussed agglomeration before, that is, the concentration of workers, industries, and supply chains in certain areas will make other workers, industries, and supply chains more likely to be concentrated there. Does gathering still matter when people work anywhere?

Mark Muro

This is a very good question. I think that agglomeration is a fact of the universe, but it depends to some extent on technology and communication. In the past, every communication advancement resulted in more clusters. And I think this clustering will still be crucial. But we do not fully know how this will develop. Our evidence shows that long-term moving is not yet a big feature, but remote work is having an impact, affecting where people work and the decisions they make. But the need to maintain contact with the office still seems to exist.

So I think we may see more movement, but it will not necessarily end these dense clusters. They are very powerful, especially in the early stages of emerging technologies. I think artificial intelligence platforms are on the rise. This is when the cluster is most important: when something becomes a commodity, people will leave. But I think the core of the AI ​​economy is to keep skilled workers in the big center.

Rani Mora

I recently wrote an article article For various reasons, recruiting people is very difficult nowadays. To solve this problem, many companies and industries provide remote work as a necessary benefit. Now, 10% of jobs on LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter allow you to do at least some remotely, up from 2% last year. This seems not enough. These jobs received four times the number of applications. Do you see remote work continue to rise to solve recruitment problems?

Mark Muro

First, remote work will not return to the low levels before the pandemic. My point is very simple. Remote work is not always super-remote or super-remote. It will be almost far away. I think remote work is vital not only to what workers want (or say they want) but also to what the company provides. I think you would think that this is a ubiquitous starting point. It will only be assumed.

Rani Mora

Obviously, work that is usually done on a computer can be done remotely more easily. But more and more jobs—such as home health assistants, who have to walk into people’s homes most of the time—are increasingly starting to complete at least a small part of their work remotely, the paperwork part. Have you also seen an increase in remote work among these manual types of work?

Mark Muro

Yes, very much. Remote work part-time of the week is becoming and will become more common. Anything that hinders people’s employment will be questioned and provide new benefits. I think the labor market has been a seller’s market for some time. Therefore, remote work will become the proposal of various employers.


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