This potential shift could have devastating consequences for extremely expensive places, but it could also spread wealth more evenly. Before the pandemic, “America had become less mobile than almost at any point in our history,” Kelman says. “No matter what the economic cost of being in San Francisco, people would pay it.” Having more remote workers means “wages in Texas are going up,” he says. So are housing prices. “You can’t have a $2 million, 2,000-square-foot house in San Francisco and a $200,000 house in Dallas that are basically the same for very long when there are airplanes and internet connections and Zoom.”
None of this makes the decisions employees have to make over the next several months any easier, especially for those who relocated in a hurry. Musiker, the Redfin communications director, has until May to figure out whether she’s staying in Rochester permanently and taking the pay cut. She’s still not sure—and the decision will depend partly on whether her husband is allowed to work remotely after the pandemic—but she’s more open to living upstate than she ever thought she’d be. “We were making a lot of sacrifices in Brooklyn,” Musiker says. In Rochester, “we get so much more for our money.”
Read next: U.S. Economy Could Get a Boost From Expanded Child Care
Source: Work From Home: Tech Companies Cut Pay of Workers Moving Out of Big Cities – Bloomberg