CHAPTER 5
Why Doesn’t the Working Class Just Move to Where the Jobs Are?
ONE BIG QUESTION pundits and commentators mull over is this: why don’t people
facing hard economic times move to where economic times are better? If you live in
Detroit, Michigan; Millinocket, Maine; Camden, New Jersey; York, Pennsylvania; or
Yuma, Arizona,^74 why not move to an area where the economy is growing? At best,
elites are puzzled. At worst, they’re patronizing and even scornful. “Donald Trump
cannot deliver new jobs like pizza wherever you live,” said Glenn Helton,* decrying the
“stubborn immobility of the white working class.”
Part of the reason is the power of “clique networks,” as sociologists call them, where
everybody knows everyone else and ties run deep.^75 This has a practical side to it: in the
working class of all races, family ties also involve material help with child care and home
improvements—things wealthier families buy. Clique networks help protect working-
class families from their vulnerable market position.
The folkways of elites are very different. Professionals’ national job markets also mean
they often end up far away from their families, and family relationships among adults
typically involve purely emotional ties: families support one another by talking things
through. If working-class networks are narrow and deep, professionals’ are broad but
shallow.
A class-migrant professor tried to explain to a colleague why he saw his distant family so
much more than his colleague saw his (who lived closer): “It’s a blue-collar thing....
Middle-class kids are groomed to fly away, and they do. The working class likes to keep
its young close to home.”^76 Tearing a working-class person from the network that defines
their life is a far heavier lift than insisting that a Harvard grad move to Silicon Valley.
The professional elite values change and self-development; working-class families value
stability and community. The professional elite associates change with challenge,
excitement, opportunity, and innovation. But for families a few paychecks away from
losing their homes and stable middle-class lives, respect for stability reigns supreme. “I
associate change with loss,” said a class migrant whose father was evicted from
apartment after apartment. Moving to a new city or state is often appealing for someone
from the professional elite, and an alarming prospect for someone from the working class.
(By the way, the working class shares this with low-income Americans of all races, who
- Why Doesn’t the Working Class Just Move to Where the Jobs Are?