On the Road to Where?

This morning, Arthur Brooks wrote a fascinating essay in The Times (“How to Get Americans Moving Again,” 5/21/16) on how Americans do not move as much as we once did. Despite flatlining economies, there is no migration to where the jobs are. He wonders if this is because more folks do not have the skills to move—i.e., the jobs are for welders on a pipeline, not just anybody willing to work, so folks don’t move. He wonders if it is dependency on public aid that does not follow someone should they move. He wonders if it is simple uncertainty—why add moving to all one’s other worries? Apparently, less than 10% of the American population is on the move, with the other 90% staying put.

My wife and I are part of that 10%. Following a job, we moved from one coast to the other, leaving Georgia for Northern California. We moved because it seemed like a good time to move. Our kids are fledgling adults, doing all right in their independent lives, on the move themselves—one headed for Thailand, the other relocating to Asheville, NC. Why should mom and dad stay home? Vocationally, it was time for a change, just to freshen things up, both for me and my employer. We have always been curious, so why stick to just one region of the world? Why not see more of the country? Why not be somewhere with different outlooks, habits, and a new ethos? Why not embrace an adventure?

I know that one piece of our decision is that life was stable enough to make such a decision. Our parents are doing well enough that we need not be near at hand to oversee their daily lives. We have the reserves to see us through the costs of transitioning, of living on one income for a time, and moving between radically different housing markets. Moving is expensive on a lot of fronts. Mobility comes with economic stability. 

Interestingly, it does not always take a lot of money. My son’s sojourn around the world to Thailand will be done with almost no money. But he can do so because he is unencumbered. He has no debt. He has no domestic responsibility. All he needs is basic food, shelter, and healthcare. He also has the skills for work abroad as a teacher, coupled with support of family to help with any hurdles. So, even though he has little money, he can cope because of a safety net that can go with him, so to speak, even if we are not literally with him. 

Which leads back to the social justice issue Mr. Brooks raises—even when a person needs to move to find a better job (or a job, period), but can’t because they do not have the support to do so, we face a crisis. We do not train skilled labor any more, or, at least, not like we used to. In my high school in small town North Carolina, we had two tracks—one for college, and one for vocation. The kids in the latter line were not looked down on, treated with contempt, or treated as dummies—it was seen as a legitimate entrance into the world of work for folks good with hands, bodies, and minds for building structures, making things, and fixing things. They could go straight from high school into the work force and know they would make it. Some of them did astoundingly well, now owning their own companies. Now, where are those kids supposed to go for training? Also, how can you move when there is no further education or training after one has been working for a couple of decades? Again, I saw this writ large in North Carolina. When the textile mills closed en masse, there weren’t any options for the displaced workers to learn something new. You could see hope die in a whole village. But folks had to stay put because that was where the aid was.

The world is changing so rapidly and so completely. Manufacturing is becoming tech. Tech requires less actual human beings. Education is focused on training minds academically, but without much effort aimed at workable skills or artistic expression. Sadly, too many kids are relying on sports as an avenue into the world instead of skills or academics. The self-supportive athlete is one of the rarest of birds. Folks become cemented into place because there is nowhere to go.

So how should the church respond? What can we do? How would we do it?