For Many Laid-Off Americans, Long-Distance Move Is Not Solution;Today's Unemployed Are More Likely to Stay Put, Wait Out Recession
Unemployed in Massachusetts, Michel Raguin is an ideal prospect for a job in the Sun Belt. But he has turned away the inquiries of a Texas headhunter and paged past newspaper ads seeking someone with just his credentials in California.</br></br>Ten months after losing his job as a computer hardware designer, Raguin is determined to stay close to home, in large part because he is unconvinced a move across the country would shelter him from economic misfortune. He fears the recession that prompted massive layoffs at his employer of 22 years could be around the corner for other parts of the country as well.</br></br>"I could move. . . . They have work to do in California," said Raguin. "But I'm not sure that six months from now they may not have a recession comparable to the one in New England now."</br></br>Demographers, sociologists and economists predict that many Americans like Raguin, who are squeezed out of work by the current economic downturn, will fight an instinct to seek greener pastures and try to wait out a recession at home.</br></br>These experts dismiss the common wisdom - built on stories of the Oklahoma-to-California migration of the Great Depression and the Detroit-to-Dallas stream a decade ago - that during an economic downturn many Americans will move, sometimes great distances, in search of jobs. They argue that not only is the common wisdom exaggerated, the absence of dramatic regional disparities in today's economy gives people little incentive to move across the country to follow the promise of prosperity.