There’s an interesting article at CityLab by Sarah Holder on how Tulsa is luring young workers away from California and New York to Oklahoma:
Ukabam is a member of the first inaugural class of Tulsa Remote, an initiative launched in November 2019 that pushed people untethered by office jobs to pack up and move to Oklahoma. Those like Ukabam who work remotely and got through the competitive application process were promised $10,000 in installments over the course of a year, plus cheap housing and an upgraded social infrastructure.
The program reflects a new economic development strategy that Tulsa is among the first to pilot. Traditionally, cities looking to spur their economies may offer incentives to attract businesses. But at a time when Americans are moving less frequently than they have in more than half a century, and the anticlimactic race to host an Amazon HQ2 soured some governments on corporate tax breaks, Tulsa is one of several locales testing out a new premise: Pay people instead.
Similar programs are being tried in Vermont, northwest Alabama, and most recently Topeka, Kansas, each with their own variations.
The rate at which people are moving for jobs is now the lowest in the post-war period. There will need to be a lot more successes and a lot more creative problems like Tulsa Remote to stem the hollowing-out of the country that’s presently occurring.
I’ve worked a remote job for the past three years. I think it is the future for a lot of work that is primarily computer-based. Although not without trade offs, for the most part I think it’s a win-win for employees and employers.
IMO the primary barriers to working remotely are lack of trust on the part of some employers and lack of trustworthiness on the part of some employees. I experience that myself. Until a few months working from home was acceptable to my present employers. Then a company-wide directive came out banning it except under extraordinary circumstances. The employer had lost confidence in the employees who were working from home.
My personal experience is the younger the company – the more open they are to remote work.
Interesting that they would move from California to a higher tax state like Oklahoma. OTOH, if you give people free money, and then give them the amenities and lifestyle that you can have in a higher tax state, it looks like people will want to live there anyway, at least for a while. The real test will be to check in a few years from now and see how many stayed.
https://taxfoundation.org/2020-sales-taxes/
Steve