Are you willing to move for a job?

[chattyneighbor]

I'd need an employment contract first. 3 years guaranteed unless I did something awful like committed a crime. Or died.

[MongooseHugger]

Originally Posted by JrzDefector

These aren't super-high-paying jobs in these places. If I was established in an area and getting by, I would hesitate to take a chance on a job that paid slightly more elsewhere. I grew up in Jersey - the cost of living was HIGH. However, opportunity was also everywhere. There were resources for enrichment that were low cost or free. You could take your kids to DC or NYC or Philly pretty easily.

I've spent time in smaller towns. Yeah, costs may be low to live there, but how high are the costs to get out? You take a blue collar job there hoping to make a better life for your children and you're there, with no support system, no easy access to urban environments with museums, universities, etc. Travel is a chore.

I moved 2,000 miles away from my family to set up a life in Denver. Without the local knowledge I had in my hometown or the vast social network I had cultivated, I have had extra costs. No big deal for me, but for someone working in a blue collar job, those issues could be potentially catastrophic. Indeed, Denver has a lot of homeless people, and it seems like a lot of them are people who were passing through or were looking for opportunities and got stuck there.

I get why people are reluctant to move to these towns with job openings in rural areas. Is it going to improve your life enough that it's worth the risks? That's the question.

Ironically, I see it the other way around. Do I want to take a huge chance to go to a big city where it costs a lot and I could run the risk of someday having my job offshored, automated, or replaced with an H-1B and then get shut out of my industry and be stuck homeless because it was too hard to break into another industry and the low wage jobs around there couldn't let me buy or rent so much as a cardboard box?