Comment by asdff
3 days ago
They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area. Look at median home prices in rust belt cities. Mortgages around $2k a month or so. Very doable for a lot of people but you never hear a drum beat about this. You never hear about people moving to these cities unless they have family there already to remind them that, hey, this is in fact a great deal.
>They don't want just a house though. They want a house in a "cool" area.
I'd just like a proper job again, thanks. Just like I had before the tech industry shit itself 2-3 years ago. My current "cool" ideas are not being in debt and not worrying about a 3000 dollar catalytic converter replacement.
Now my "really cool ideas" is being able to take a bus around town without being stranded if I miss the last bus at 8pm. But that's blue sky thinking right now.
Are there jobs in those cities who sit in an area named after their economic collapse?
Do student loan costs go down if you move to a low cost of living area?
We had some movement in the direction of people immigrating to low cost areas like that with the rise of remote work, but then execs decided they didn’t like not having control over their workers live and did RTO. To their offices in the cities with high rent and home prices.
You never heard about people taking that “great deal” because it’s not a great deal. Like really, you think there’s money left on the table like that and there’s not at least some low double digit percentage of the population that would have sought out the benefit? Or is it more likely the market evaluated the option and it’s not good
It's very rich when people who are likely 15-20+ years in their career in San Franscisco are telling the modern youth to just "move to Alabama". As if they can just find a cushy tech job in a market that is using RTO's to force layoffs.
People this detached really need to spend a few days on linkedIn applying to jobs. Not with their connection, but through those horrible workday portals and thousands of apps turned in after an hour of the post.
Perhaps you were unaware but there are good jobs in industries outside technology. And if you want a tech job, well there are quite a few in Alabama. Some of them are centered around the Marshall Space Flight Center.
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I didn't say move to Alabama. Try Shaker Heights, Ohio. Believe it or not, there are jobs in a metro area with 2 million people in a variety of industries.
Of course there are jobs in these places. Some of these metro areas have 2 million people. They aren't just digging though the mud in the midwest like peasants in monty python. Student loans aren't so high if you went in state.
Exactly. Do people want to live in desirable areas? Absolutely. The much bigger draw to expensive metros, however, are the vastly more robust job prospects that come with those areas.
In a city, you have both much better chances of finding employment suited to your skills specifically, better chances of being paid well for it, and better chances of upwards mobility. Plus, should it become necessary you're more likely to be able to find something to keep the bills paid with even if it's not what you'd like to be doing.
Low CoL areas by contrast come with scant employment that's generally poorly compensated and almost always has a low ceiling.
In some cases one can commute into the city for work and live in LCoL area, but then you're burning time — multiple hours each day, usually — that you'll never get back on your employer instead of yourself or with your family, plus the myriad expenses that come with driving that far and often.
Which skills do you mean? If you're talking about skills in software development or investment banking then that might be true. But skills in welding or nursing can be applied anywhere.
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70k goes a lot further in these places than 170k does in a high cost of living area that is for sure. And 70k jobs aren't so hard to find in these places if you are college educated. You can easily pull that in sales. In management. There are consulting offices in these places. Yes, some tech. Jobs where you can make a whole lot more than 70k. Healthcare. Law. Consulting. Real estate. Finance. Accounting. Yes even manufacturing is still present at a certain scale. There are still a few steel mills and these days they employ mostly high skilled engineers. Still a need for pretty much all disciplines of engineering in these places in various sectors.
People think all there is to do is work in a waffle house in the shadow of a closed steel mill, but really these are cities that by definition need a somewhat diversified economy to even function as a city at all. They have all the various pieces that make a city a city and a region a region. Sorry, not much startups, but that's about the only exception, truly, and may not even be the case adjacent to the state flagship universities.
A yes, the rust belt, where folks are famously living like fat cats.
Detroit used to suck, but it seems like enough millenials took that deal that it’s way better than ten years ago.
Used to be you could buy a starter home in those cool places. I live in one today with a $1200 mortgage. Good luck buying that now, kids.