Not the Economic Mobility We Had in Mind

"Unemployed Hit the Road to Find Jobs."  Sigh.  Why is my mind conjuring up an admittedly hyperbolic, cliched image of hobos riding the rails?

During the '92 recession, my uncle went to St. Louis for work.  Never permanently relocated, just kind of lived there temporarily for months.  Like in this article, he is an IBEW member.

Apparently, he employed the "partial-mobility strategy":

...says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution, in which people are starting to move in a makeshift and impermanent fashion. He likens it to the way many Mexican workers come to the U.S. and leave their families behind.

The article paints this in a really gendered fashion, with husbands/fathers leaving their wives and children behind.  Certainly though, men aren't the only ones facing a lack of job fit in their communities.  In DC, men and women with limited education, especially people of color, are struggling to find work even as the federal government - and an associated range of high-skilled jobs - expands.  In the Foundation world, it looks like administrative staff is being disproportionately let go compared to managers, thus implying that more women are losing their jobs.  Like in DC, there is also a racial component to the lay-offs, with African-American administrators also hit hard.

Economic mobility and stability has not improved much - and worsened for certain groups - in the last 40 years.  That's hardly a sign of progress.  We're not even close to out of the woods yet, nor do we have any idea when we will be.  If recent history tells us anything, the wealth, income and economic losses of this most recent recession will be much longer-lasting than we (are willing to) realize.

(Photo of Building Trades Unemployment Insurance Rally from aflcio2008)