Younger generation moving to rural regions because they cannot afford housing

A big swath of the younger generation in the U.S. is struggling to be able to afford the cost of housing in the cities. The statistics show that a large number of them are moving to more rural regions where the cost of housing is lower. Unfortunately there may be less good job opportunities in these areas.

The U.S. is becoming overcrowded, and just like in older times, people are venturing out and away to less populated areas with more open land.
Although a lot of the remaining lower population areas have a less pleasant climate.

In 2021, Generation Z made up the biggest percentages of people moving to South Dakota (16 percent), North Dakota (15 percent), Idaho (15 percent), Iowa (14 percent) and Kansas (14 percent).
When looking to settle down and buy a home, the new generation of young adults was most interested in taking out mortgages in Salt Lake City (22.6 percent), followed by Oklahoma City (22.36 percent) and Birmingham, Alabama (20.8 percent), according to data gathered by LendingTree. "Gen Z-ers are increasingly drawn to simpler living in their housing choices," Emilia Mann, a senior analyst at StorageCafe, told Insider. "Unlike millennials, who often gravitate to DC, Washington state and the Chicago area in Illinois , Gen Z-ers tend to favor states with lower population density, from the mountainous terrains of Montana and Idaho to the plains of Kansas and Nebraska."​

Gen Z-ers are moving to mountains seeking 'simpler living' and lower housing costs, Falyn Stempler, Daily Express US, 11-15-2023

 

To be honest I think this may be a good thing. More and more job allows remote work and as technologies like teams and zoom improve this gets easier all the time. We already have employees working around the world from home so working from rural areas will be no different as long as they have stable, fast internet. This may benefit rural communities since it may bring people with higher income into their communities. It may be a boon for the local businesses.

 

I have always lived in small towns, my current town is getting bigger, I may have to move eventually

 

sadly, many of those remote jobs are now being sent overseas, not sure they will be around much longer

 

Living in a rural area with lower overheads makes it possible for Americans to compete with IT workers overseas who also have low overheads.

Remote working was something I can recall back in the 1980's but it was corporate initiated on a very small scale, just 5 women programmers who had kids and were still needed on projects. Doubtful that any of them could have afforded to purchase that mainframe based equipment or the high speed modems either. The company installed it at their homes instead. Not sure what happened to that initiative but it was up and running successfully when I left the organization. It was about the time that the first PC's were being used in offices and the internet was still only accessible to corporations and educational institutions. I had to go to a downtown IBM office in order to log onto the internet in order to access data stored somewhere in Europe. The results were returned on a printout and from there it was manually entered into spreadsheets.

We have come a very long way from there and I suspect we still have a long way to go. Remote working has become accepted as corporations recognize that outsourcing is the cheaper alternative to owning/renting expensive CBD office space. Those "savings" will disappear into the greed obsessed Wall Street Casino Bankster's offshore accounts because that is what always happens.

I can see a REPURPOSING of CBD office spaces into communities that contain apartments, schools, shops, gyms, movies, etc. Roof gardens will sprout and the concept of inner city living will evolve into something saner than endless hours commuting just to sit in a small cubicle for 8+ hours a day. That never made any sense to me.

 

The greatest advantage North American workers have is they are all within a 3 hour time zone from east to west coast. That gives a lot of overlap and time to collaborate each day. We have offices in India and the biggest problem for us is it is very difficult to meet and work with them. The east coast has a few hours of overlap in the morning and that is only with Indian workers working very late into their evenings. The west coast has almost zero opportunity to work with them.

 

Dealt with a similar problem and was able to mitigate it by modifying the US peak task schedule of be carried out overseas in what were US non-peak demand times. From the user perspective the difference was negligible and the overseas team were not competing with US resources during peak times so they were more productive.

It wasn't even a big deal, I just made the suggestion to one team who tried it out and then the others came aboard of their own volition because of the immediate benefits. Net result was a productivity boost without any exploitation, instead better working hours for all concerned, the need for long hours dropped significantly.

 

I don't quite understand what you are saying. It sounds like you are talking about scheduling the use of finite resources. Our problem is not limited resource but difficulty in communication and collaboration. The vast majority of our clients are in North America. A large portion of our projects that are non maintenance are project based. That means collaborations with clients and a number of departments. If your business people and analyst that meets with the clients are North America based and part of the programming team is in India it makes it difficult to schedule meetings to get updates, brainstorm, etc... Couple that with a rapid application development approach and it makes the process problematic.

 

the biggest issue I have seen in corps with foreign outsourcing is that they have to treat projects as an expense, pay for each one

vs with in-house, the developers just do what needs to be done

even though it's cheaper, it's harder to get simple little projects approved

 

Yes, it looks like the population is on the move!

Of course, these new residents are driving up home prices in the areas that they're moving to and pricing out locals who also have to move to cheaper, remote areas. Locals are being priced out of Texas and Florida. Here's where they're looking for affordable homes instead. (msn.com)

Of course, higher property prices have been the result of price-fixing schemes in the real estate industry (I never liked the high prices of the for-profit real estate industry). But there was a recent court case about it, and that industry is about to collapse: How Real-Estate Brokers Are Reacting to the Historic Commission Verdict (msn.com)

 

Two other related threads on that:
California's population has spilled over into Texas (posted in United States section)
people are leaving the Northeast (posted in Economics & Trade, April 4, 2021 )

 

I think only a small percentage of these Gen Z-ers are remote workers.

13% of U.S. workers work entirely from home, and another 30% of workers work partly from home, in a hybrid model. 55% of jobs cannot work remotely.
(source: Nearly 30 percent of work remains remote as workers dig in | The Hill, February 20, 2023 )
The workers who are in jobs that allow them to work remotely on average are better paid than those who are not, and would have less difficulty affording housing than those other workers.

Considering this political forum is on the internet, I think we have to remember that there are probably a disproportionate amount of you reading this who either have a job in the computer industry or have a job that involves working remotely.

 

Maybe I misunderstood but the reason I went down the remote work rabbit hole was because at the end of the article you linked it stated:

“The increased inclination toward remote work has become a significant factor in shaping current housing preferences,” Doug Ressler, business intelligence manager at Yardi Matrix, said to StorageCafe.

“For those spending more time at home, amenities such as a dedicated home office and a larger yard are increasingly desirable, which oftentimes means relocating farther away from busy urban hotspots.”

 

"Significant factor" does not mean it is the main factor or responsible for most of the cause.
Something that is responsible for only 15% of the cause of something else could still be considered a "significant factor".
The majority of the time when someone has a fully remote job, they do not move too far away from the physical location of their job.

You make it sound like the people moving away to rural areas have fully remote jobs that don't require living anywhere near their place of employment, but I suspect the majority of these Gen Z-ers who are moving are just not paid anywhere near enough to afford a home where they grew up, and a lot of them are working in lower level jobs--not the professional office type of jobs that can be done remotely.

A lot of semi-professional office workers with decent salaries might be able to work remotely in a rural area, but a lot of them would balk at the idea of living "out in the middle of nowhere" if they have the financial means to live in a more trendy and desirable area.

I think the main thing pushing these Gen Z-ers out into more rural regions is extreme financial pressures and cost of housing, rather than remote work and the possibilities that allows for.

 

Gen Z are 11 to 26 yrs old, so not many of them are buying houses anywhere.

 

That's a fair point, but there are still a lot of 18 to 26 year olds (and even a few younger than 18 ) who are under pressure to move out and live on their own.

In many areas, it's not only buying a house that is unaffordable, but even being able to rent a small apartment.

 

I can accept that it does not have to be the main factor. I still think it will benefit those rural communities though. In the past there has been an exodus or young people from rural areas into urban areas. I remember watching youtube videos and linking them here about ghost town communities that have been in population decline for decades. Communities with a disproportionately small percentage of young people left. If more young people move to rural areas having high paying jobs they may start to rejuvenate those communities. This could lead to new businesses opening up to supply their needs which will lead to more job opportunities for people in the local community. I think we should keep our fingers crossed and hope this is a good trend.

 

When things got bad, younger people have always sought better financial opportunities elsewhere.

The thing is though, it now appears that the younger generation is unable to afford to live in the bigger city areas where the better financial opportunities exist.

Think about it. In the old days a bright young person who lived in an economically depressed area with limited opportunities, like West Virginia or somewhere in the Rust Belt, might have moved to New York City, or maybe Los Angeles.
But today a young person could no longer afford to do so, due to the insane cost of housing in these areas.

I think this is going to end up meaning a lot of young people born in regions of economic decline are going to be trapped there. Or it's going to be a lot more difficult for them to get out.
They can get a college degree, but it's going to be difficult for them to afford living in the areas where that college degree will get them a foothold into the door for a good-paying type of job.

 

Sure. South Florida is the least affordable place to live in in US, and more people are moving out than are come in. Yes, Miami population is declining.

It has always been tough for an 18 yrs old to afford anything anywhere, because at 18 people graduate from high school, and can't have any experience or education and hence would be min wage earners. At 22-23 they graduate from collage and would be earning better wages.

Maybe more will turn to the military....we'll see

Having said that, a higher percentage of 25 yr old Gen-Zers own a home (30%) than any other generation before them (at that age)

 

Less than 40% of the younger generation has a college degree by the age of 26.

Percent of Americans who actually have a college degree

For non-Hispanic Whites, in 2021 the percentage of adults age 25 and older with a 4-year degree was 41.9%.

source: Census Bureau Releases New Educational Attainment Data

 

Moving for affordability reason is a problem that every generation faces. I read on reddit all the time with young people complaining there is no way they can afford to rent in the city. I am a Gen Xer and when I was starting my career renting in the city was expensive too but I chose to move to the suburbs so I could afford to buy a home with a yard rather than spending 70% of my salary on rent downtown. I have made a 1 hour train commute everyday to work. Now over 25 years later the area I live in is over developed suburb and the homes are in excess of a million dollars. Young people claim they cannot afford to rent where we live. When I started working public transportation was just being built into my area and that made affordable living possible. That was my technology boon. Now gen Z has remote work. It is their equalizer. Now they can essentially live anywhere and work. As technology improves more and more jobs can be done from home or maybe better urban planning will be the answer. You have Elon Musk with his hyperloop, you have the Saudis building their new super city along a high speed rail line. What will be the next new technology that will revolutionize how we work and live? This innovation that is coming about is to address the issue you are talking about which is creating affordable housing for the next generation.

 

I suspect these jobs that involve remote work will not be the easiest to get for every member of the younger generation, neither will many persons be cut out for it.
It might help create more additional options for some.

And I also suspect these remote workers will increasingly be in competition with the one billion people in India, a poorer country where workers can be paid one fourth of what it would cost to hire someone in the U.S.

 

Typically younger people straight out of college are not offered remote jobs. They want them in the office so they can get them started under supervision

 

I totally agree and that is why I threw in examples of new innovation ideas of the hyperloop or the Saudis building a mega city along a high speed rail line. This really is the same problem my generation faced 25 years ago. How to allow people to live out in the suburbs to commute to work in a reasonable amount of time? In my case the commuter train takes close to an hour to commute 30 miles or so. When we visited France we travelled from Paris to Tours a distance of 130 miles in just a bit longer. Germany has high speed rail everywhere and lets not even begin to talk about what China has done with high speed rail.

Imagine if we had high speed rail equivalent to the French TGV system, (which has been around forever). If we could make a 100 miles commute in an hour how many more affordable places does that open up for people to live.

The last time I went to China was back during the Olympics but I have been thinking about going there just to experience their high speed rail system. I have watched videos of their trains and terminals and they are decades ahead of us.

I agree that is a problem. I was out spoken against starting operations in India over a decade ago and now we have hundreds if not thousands of people there. As I said the time zones are our biggest advantage although there are some cities in India that are syncing their day to match our time zone. That is why it is harder than ever for the younger generations. We live in a global economy where now you have to compete against the world. That is why the declining college enrollment you mention earlier will be problematic for America.

 

I think it's a different issue from 25 years ago. In the 90s, in most areas if you went 30 or 40 minutes outside the big cities the price of housing fell downward dramatically.
After around maybe 2003 to 2015, you have to go much farther out away from the cities before the price of housing really begins falling dramatically.

There has been sprawling growth all around the areas surrounding big cities. The population has rapidly grown in the suburbs, and with that housing prices, due to the pressure on housing.

People haven't just been priced out of cities, they've been priced out of all the areas that are within feasible commuting distance of those cities.

(The only areas within commuting distance that might be just a little more affordable are high-crime Black or immigrant areas, and even those areas are often still rather overpriced, and often look kind of unsightly and dingy, with visible poverty)