It has been said that people vote with their feet. They pick up and go to where the jobs and opportunities are.
The hard part is that it costs more -- a lot more -- to move to where the jobs and opportunities are than to move to where jobs and opportunities are limited. My favorite measure for this doesn't come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nor does it come from any other agency of the federal government.
It comes from U-Haul, the truck and trailer rental company. It has on-the-ground evidence and prices its rentals accordingly. Go to its Web site, and you can learn quickly where people are going. You can also learn where they are leaving.
How will you know this? Simple.
If lots of people are trying to go where you want to go, it will cost a lot more than renting equipment to go to the place everyone is trying to leave. Just as there is a law of supply and demand, there is a law of arrivals and departures. Finding a moving truck will be expensive where departures outnumber arrivals. It will be cheap in places where arrivals outnumber departures.
If nature abhors a vacuum, business is disgusted by unused inventory.
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Admittedly, this was a Sunday to Wednesday stay, not a weekend, but it gives you an idea of why the unemployment rate is so high: People aren't traveling, vacationing or gambling as much these days.
So what does it cost to leave Las Vegas?
Try $1,880 if you want to rent a 26-foot U-Haul truck, fill it with your worldly goods, and drive it to San Antonio. (In these comparisons, Nov. 3 was selected as the moving date.) But if you wanted to leave San Antonio (August unemployment rate: 7%) and move to Las Vegas, it would cost you only $437 for the same equipment.
That's quite a difference.
The difference is substantial even for cities that aren't hurting nearly as much. To move from Seattle, with an unemployment rate of 8.8% in August (well below the national average of 9.8%), to San Antonio would cost $1,404, but only $858 to move from San Antonio to Seattle.
The 'Texas premium'
I found similar price differences for other cities. Want to move from Chicago (9.7% unemployment) to Houston (8.4% unemployment)? It will cost you $1,970. But it will cost only $449 to make the trip from Houston to Chicago. Los Angeles (11.8% unemployment) to Houston was $2,051, while Houston to Los Angeles was only $555.San Francisco (10.7% unemployment) to Dallas (8.3% unemployment) will cost you $1,988. But the opposite will cost only $689. Boston to Dallas was $2,134, while Dallas to Boston was only $634.
Real-estate deals for $200,000 and up
Miami (10.8% unemployment) to Austin, Texas (7.2% unemployment), will cost $1,706. But the reverse will cost only $827. Similarly, Phoenix to Austin will cost $1,490, while Austin to Phoenix will cost only $654.
We might call these differences the "Texas premium" because regardless of location -- East Coast, West Coast or somewhere in between -- the migration appears to be to Texas. U-Haul is lowering the price drastically for anyone who is willing to move the equipment back.
To be sure, all the differences aren't as extreme. If you want to move from hip but hurting Nashville (9.8% unemployment) to hip and growing Austin, for instance, it will cost $998 -- but it won't cost much less to move from Austin to Nashville, $826.
In a time when lots of people are feeling powerless, there is a big message here: There is still a lot we can do for ourselves. We can make decisions. We can, and do, move to places where life looks better.Questions about personal finance and investments may be e-mailed to scott@scottburns.com. Questions of general interest may be answered in future columns. More columns by Scott Burns can be found on MSN Money and at AssetBuilder.com.
Published Oct. 27, 2009
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