You would be forgiven for assuming that the US was in the middle of a mass migration. As cities became Covid-19 hotspots and remote work skyrocketed, there was a lot of noise about shifts towards suburban and rural areas and the decline of coastal cities.
In fact, the overall American mobility rate barely budged during the pandemic — which came during a multi-decade decline in population movement, reaching a record low in 2021. Exact figures vary by survey, but Americans are moving at roughly half the rate they were in the middle of the 20th century.
“There was definitely a big spike in mobility at the onset of the pandemic,” says Riordan Frost, a senior research analyst at Harvard’s Center for Joint Housing Studies. But after that initial rise, “mobility trends continued their long-term decline, and went back to these pre-pandemic trends”.
Change of address data from the US Postal Service shows an increase in “temporary” address changes in the first months of the pandemic. Shifts in permanent address, however, track fairly closely with the months before the pandemic.
And while there was an outflow from urban cores to suburban areas, this continues a decades-long trend, partially balanced by higher natural population growth and higher rates of international migration to cities. To the extent that it accelerated during the pandemic, those additional losses seem to have largely reversed.
Younger and lower-income people continue to move at higher rates overall, but these groups have also seen sharper declines in mobility over the past decade — perhaps reflecting the relationship between low housing vacancy rates and local moves. Meanwhile, the mobility rate has ticked up modestly for higher-income earners and college graduates. These are people who might have a wider range of options as they look to move locally in expensive metropolitan areas. They are also more likely to be able to work remotely or have jobs that allow or require long-distance relocations.
While there have been significant declines in these long-distance moves across state and county lines, the most dramatic mobility declines have come from local, intra-county moves. Here the supply and affordability of housing plays a larger role. Declines in mobility have continued even as soaring rents and housing costs have priced many out of expensive areas of the city centre. This may be explained, in part, by a simultaneous decline in housing vacancy, particularly in large and expensive cities.
Nationally, gross housing vacancy — a combination of rental and homeowner rates — sits at about 7 per cent, roughly half of where it was during a 2010 peak and at its lowest level since the mid-1980s. The construction of new housing units has rebounded gradually since the recession that followed the 2008 financial crash, but still hasn’t returned to late-1990s levels.
“There’s a strong correlation with the fact that there’s just not enough units available,” says Frost. “Once you find a spot — both for price reasons and for logistical reasons — you just stay put in that spot longer than people would have in the past.”
A study from 2021 examined the relationship between mobility rates and housing conditions, and described a “friction of competition” that emerges as a result of increasing housing prices and decreasing vacancy rates. Longer and more difficult searches discourage moves. Data from the US Census Bureau’s American housing survey shows a steady increase in housing tenure over the past two decades. Renters now report having been in their current residence for an average of about five years.
Of course, many Americans still move out of necessity, faced with unaffordable rents or eviction. But for those for whom moving is a choice, searching for a new apartment may not seem worth the effort if it involves long waits — nor the cost when bidding fiercely against other would-be tenants.
For many, and especially for millennials, the American dream of home ownership has become elusive. Increasingly, even finding a new apartment may be too.
