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Yeah you can bike here so much more than most places. I can bike in decent weather for over twice as many days here in Phoenix than where I was living in eastern Washington state before moving here.
Yes, July is actually one of my favorite months to get out especially when the monsoon is alive and kicking like this year. A few recent shots from the mountain and one of the canals.
Why are you considering Houston, Tampa or Orlando? Their costs of living are just as good as Phoenix. All are very LGBT friendly; in fact, 4 years ago, Houston voted in the first openly gay mayor of any big city in the U.S. All are warm weather locales with no state income tax.
Agreed ^^. People factually put up with lousy weather for job opportunities. I did early in my career. And once the roots are planted, many people stay put because of family. We did. These are arguably the most two important reasons why people live where they live.
Though in 2021, you will see surveys that range from 40% to a whopping 70% of white-collar employees now WFH. This COVID impacted a permanent paradigm shift. It's expected that >50% of the white-collar workforce will WFH. In fact, in a recent survey, 30% of employees say that if their company forces them back in the office, they plan on leaving. the genie is out of the bottle. Others like yourself prefer to go to the office. Yet other careers (lab-based white-collar jobs) will never WFH.
Therefore, weather and COL will climb up the list of importance. It's pretty obvious where this is going. Potentially, the bigger that average PHX area housing appreciate happened because the white-collar WFH folks outbid on homes versus their blue-collar counterparts. Thoughts?
I seriously doubt more than 1/3 of office workers, long term, will get extended WFH opportunities, i.e. more than two of 5 workdays for two reason. First, committed obligations on office space. Companies like Apple, Oracle, and JPMChase have committed billions for new campuses or have long term leases in place. Those leases entail a lot of equipment on the books too. Second, many managers/executives question productivity and effectiveness of collaboration when most members are WFH. I know Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is much against increasing WFH hours.
As a non-WFH white-collar professional (because of my field it's just not physically possible but I imagine some of it can be since most jobs have a little bit of office work) what we will see is a riddance of the "sunshine tax" that plagues the US Sunbelt economically and mean that jobs will pay much more equally throughout the nation. As a non-WFH professional, this hurts me in the short-term (present day) but helps me in the long run. Short-term? Silicon Valley and other HCOL area professionals moving in and making my day-to-day life expensive. Long-Term? A nationwide COL that is *mostly* similar as employers will have to address the regional COL gaps eventually (South becomes HCOL, north becomes LCOL as more and more shift). Jobs will pay the same which means living in LA or PHX will not matter as much. This means that regardless of where you are born in this country, you will have access to most of the same opportunities.
This is not like before, where people who cannot afford to move or go to college far away (most people) are now locked out of those job or internship opportunities. This means workers will need to be more competitive, but the fact that this will improve upward mobility and class stability (for people in "declining" areas) is an overall good for the American people. This is not factoring in environmental or other benefits we will get from allowing WFH for positions where it is possible.
This helps places like Phoenix, which has always been a poor city economically when it comes to job opportunities. This hurts cities like NYC or San Francisco where people who live there have managed to propel their careers by basically shutting out competitors (local hiring only by employers).
Yes Phoenix will become more expensive to match other cities. But many other cities are on this upwards trend. Some cities are so expensive that they are stagnating for the first time in 20+ years. What we will see is that Phoenix COL will get closer to places like Seattle, LA but not *identical*. Jobs from any respectable employer will follow suit in light of the exponentially increasing COL changes throughout the country.
Some good points but I see an key omission in your discussion, i.e. large companies are just relocating in whole or in part their presence to sunshine states. The issue is relocations haven't been equally occurring. Certain states are disproportionately benefitting, specifically, Texas, NC, TN, have been the sunbelt markets gathering the most business relocations and expansions. I think AZ suffers from its geography, both in weather and not really being in another time zone than California, relative to the other states I mentioned. For example, just today, Disney announced its shifting two thousand positions from L.A. to Orlando. Earlier this year, Oracle, Apple, Hewlett-Packard all announced expansions or relocations out of California but none of this is in states west of the Rockies. Tesla and Space X are expanding in Texas. Microsoft bought land near Atlanta. Samsung which toyed with opening a new plant in AZ now looks like it would just build a second plant in Texas.
Don't come here. The apartments that are now 1k in rent are those who were considered lower end or the cheapest at once. I am planning on moving from here. The rent increases are disgusting! Stay where you are and visit.
Yes, July is actually one of my favorite months to get out especially when the monsoon is alive and kicking like this year. A few recent shots from the mountain and one of the canals.
Any normal person who listens to this and expects to get outside in July is going to be in for a really bad time. There are people who bike in the dead of winter through snow and sleet in the northeast too, but they certainly don’t represent the average person. Hopefully most people aren’t taking these kind of posts at face value and realize that you have to be on the extreme fringe to be exercising outside in the middle of the summer in the hottest city in the entire United States.
Some good points but I see an key omission in your discussion, i.e. large companies are just relocating in whole or in part their presence to sunshine states. The issue is relocations haven't been equally occurring. Certain states are disproportionately benefitting, specifically, Texas, NC, TN, have been the sunbelt markets gathering the most business relocations and expansions. I think AZ suffers from its geography, both in weather and not really being in another time zone than California, relative to the other states I mentioned. For example, just today, Disney announced its shifting two thousand positions from L.A. to Orlando. Earlier this year, Oracle, Apple, Hewlett-Packard all announced expansions or relocations out of California but none of this is in states west of the Rockies. Tesla and Space X are expanding in Texas. Microsoft bought land near Atlanta. Samsung which toyed with opening a new plant in AZ now looks like it would just build a second plant in Texas.
You are correct that we are being routinely looked over for these positions. The question being "why?" Why we may be looked over over other sunshine states is certainly up for debate.
It should be noted that if Arizona did not have Phoenix, Arizona would be as poor as Mississippi. If you don't believe me, look at New Mexico. In the top 10 poorest states in the country. Outside of Phoenix, Arizona is no different economically than New Mexico in terms of GDP production. But we do have Phoenix. Given how the other cities in this state aren't deemed reliable, we can narrow this down to how are these companies perceiving Phoenix?
Phoenix metro is roughly the size of Philadelphia, even more dense per people per square mile than Chicago metro (2020 census), in a county about the size of New Jersey, in a state bigger than New England. We aren't in the little leagues, and serve as a hub for a large geographic area. Most of this large geographic area is sparsely populated, for good reason mind you, due to the climate and geography of our hand-carved state. It's simply not friendly for that. This is different than Texas, an even bigger state with a plurality of major cities, some of those cities being bigger than Phoenix. This is also different from North Carolina, which like Ohio has a plurality of cities with approximately equal weight in politics and strength throughout the area.
Arizona's performance is truly heavily dependent on Phoenix's performance, and nothing else to put it's weight on. Phoenix carries our weight, and how this state is. This is the big problem to our area. Companies probably want to keep major investments in places where there's reasonable amount of room to expand. Texas makes sense. They can build a plant near Houston, another near San Antonio, etc. while dealing with a similar tax/political structure and having large separate talent pools to draw from for employees. The only real place for a talent pool to draw from is Phoenix, and while there are many people here, are they good employees for your industry? Is there enough of a talent pool here to garner employees for more than one facility?
On top of this, most people do not like the heat that we have or our desert environment. Texas has even hotter areas than Phoenix (Houston metro) but Houston is not in a desert. Dallas is objectively cooler than Phoenix but barely, a plus for Dallas, and also not in a desert environment. Neither is San Antonio or Austin, who are probably also comparable to us in the heat battle. It should be noted that Austin's success story was because it was a lively city "blue city in a deep red sea", of which we do not offer. Nashville offers this, which is why Nashville is becoming the next Austin for tech as Austin becomes too expensive, and why places are picking Tennessee.
So it's a combination of:
- Phoenix being in a relatively unpopular desert environment, which some people love (enough to make us the big city we are today), but most people hate
- Phoenix being the only city carrying the state with one talent pool, while other states have multiple talent pools (see Texas)
- Phoenix not offering the right amenities or lifestyle to draw people with the right talent to move here (see Austin and Nashville)
- Phoenix not offering the right education for high-level talent pools for higher paying jobs in a mechanical/technical industry (see Research Triangle in North Carolina)
- Phoenix not being perceived as a large enough player to hold status for corporate jobs (Atlanta is apparently)
While taxes could be part of it, I don't think that's truly the case. I think anyone with a brain knows that income tax or no income tax, the government will find a way. Companies know this too.
Any normal person who listens to this and expects to get outside in July is going to be in for a really bad time. There are people who bike in the dead of winter through snow and sleet in the northeast too, but they certainly don’t represent the average person. Hopefully most people aren’t taking these kind of posts at face value and realize that you have to be on the extreme fringe to be exercising outside in the middle of the summer in the hottest city in the entire United States.
Hopefully most people don't take posts like this at face value and realize that you can safely spend time outdoors in Phoenix during the middle of summer. Take a few precautions, know your route, build yourself (IE up don't wake up on a 115 degree day and decide to do a new 20 mile hike you've never been on before at noon), bring plenty of water but leave your dog at home, and know your limits.
I've lived in the Northeast, I'm much more active in the summer here than I was in the winter there. Dark, cold, and wet conditions is straight up miserable.
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Thoughts?
