The Homa Files

A friend send me an article about the current economic challenges.

The author turned a phrase that caught my attention:

“Capital and technology are mobile, labor isn’t.”

He was making a globalization point, but it holds domestically, too.

Now, as somebody who made 13 job-related moves, I almost glossed over the point.

My parents told me that – in the real old days – folks moved from the coal mining area of Pennsylvania to Detroit  (autos) and Pittsburgh-Cleveland (steel) because that’s where the jobs were. I guess labor was mobile then.

So, I always wondered why folks in Detroit didn’t pack up and head for Texas when the car companies started to crater.

I guess the usual answer is friends & family and an odd geographic comfort factor.

These days, lots of folks – even if they want to move — are tied down geographically since they can’t sell their houses.

So, labor is even more  immobile, and we don’t just need jobs, we need jobs in places like Detroit.

Might happen ..

This entry was posted on January 14, 2011 at 6:55 am and is filed under Employment - Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.