High rents are stopping young people moving away from small towns for better-paid work, report finds

Rising rents mean young people are now less likely to move away from home towns to better paying-parts of the country compared to 20 years ago, according to The Resolution Foundation think tank’s report 'Moving Matters'.

All age groups are moving jobs less frequently than before, but the fall for young people is especially pronounced. The number of 25 to 34-year-olds starting a new job and moving home over the course of a year fell by almost half, from 30,000 to 18,000, between 1997 and 2018.

Salary increases young people might benefit from by moving to bigger cities are being wiped out by high housing costs. A mover relocating from a low earning local authority such as East Devon to one in a higher earning area e.g. Bristol, would have seen their earnings after housing costs rise by 16 per cent in 1997, compared to just 1 per cent today.

Do you consider cost of living when choosing where to work?

You should - it makes a huge difference to your disposable income and quality of life.

The flip side to this effect are more young people are remaining in smaller towns, which should ultimately improve the productivity of those towns, so maybe this isn't quite as bad an outcome as the headline suggests.

Although the housing crisis certainly is bad, and more needs to be done to solve it.

What do you think?

The report can be found here:

https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/moving-matters-housing-costs-and-labour-market-mobility/