Housing troubles immobilize U.S. labor

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/03/business/labor.php


Sam Kirkland has chosen to stay in Detroit, while his wife takes a job in Arizona, rather than selling their home for a loss. (Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times)


By Louis Uchitelle
Published: April 3, 2008

Dr. Michele Morgan migrated last fall from Detroit to Phoenix, taking a job as a psychiatrist. She expected her husband, Sam Kirkland, to join her soon, since he was accepting an early-retirement package from his employer, General Motors. But he cannot move, he says, because he has not been able to sell the four-bedroom family home.

"As things now stand," said Kirkland, who is 51 and intends to seek work in Phoenix, if he ever gets there, "my wife might decide to give up her job in Phoenix and come back to Detroit for a while, until we can sell the house."

The rapid decline in housing prices is distorting the normal workings of the American labor market. Mobility opens up job opportunities, allowing workers to go where they are most needed.

When housing is not an obstacle, more than five million Americans, nearly 4 percent of the U.S. work force, move annually from one place to another - to new jobs after layoff, or to higher-paying work, or to the next career rung - often the goal of a corporate transfer. Or people seek, as in Morgan's case, an escape from harsh northern winters.

Now this mobility is increasingly restricted. Unable to sell their homes easily and move on, tens of thousands of people like Kirkland and Morgan are making the labor force less flexible just as a weakening economy puts pressure on workers to move to wherever companies are still hiring.

Signaling an incipient recession, nearly 85,000 jobs disappeared in the United States from December through February, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to announce Friday that March failed to produce a turnaround in hiring.

FULL story at link.

[Vincardog]

1. "an incipient recession," my A$$ it is the new great depression.

[enid602]

2. to the Morgans

Notice to the Morgans: don't buy a house here in Phoenix; prices are falling.