PARTICIPANTS
Steven Davis, John Cochrane, Valerie Ramey, John Taylor, Mert Akan, Cevat Aksoy, Jose Maria Barrero, Jonathan Berk, Hoyt Bleakley, Michael Boskin, Tom Bowen, David Brady, Tom Church, Elizabeth Elder, Shana Farley, David Figlio, Nick Gebbia, Paul Gregory, Bob Hall, Erick Hanushek, Jon Hartley, Michael Hartney, Ken Judd, Matthew Kahn, Patrick Kehoe, Hyoseul Kim, Pete Klenow, Evan Koenig, Stephen Kotkin, Roman Kraüssl, David Laidler, Carlos Lastra, Nelson Layfield, Mickey Levy, Patrick McLaughlin, Ilian Mihov, David Mitch, Brendan Moore, Nick Parker, Elena Pastorino, John Pencavel, Andrew Pfluger, Valerie Ramey, Flavio Rovida, Krishna Sharma, Richard Sousa, Tom Stephenson, Jack Tatom, Yevgeniy Teryoshin, Ramin Toloui, Alexander Zentefis
ISSUES DISCUSSED
Steven Davis, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the Hoover Institution, and Senior Fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), discussed “The New Geography of Labor Markets,” a paper joint with Mert Akan (Stanford University), Jose Maria Barrero (ITAM), Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), Tom Bowen (ITAM), Shelby Buckman (Stanford University), and Hyoseul Kim (Hoover Institution).
John Taylor, the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, was the moderator.
SUMMARY
We use matched employer-employee data to study where Americans live in relation to employer worksites. Mean distance from employee home to employer worksite rose from 15 miles in 2019 to 26 miles in 2023. Twelve percent of employees hired after March 2020 live at least fifty miles from their employers in 2023, triple the pre-pandemic share. Distance from employer rose more for persons in their 30s and 40s, in highly paid employees, and in Finance, Information, and Professional Services. Among persons who stay with the same employer from one year to the next, we find net migration to states with lower top tax rates and areas with cheaper housing. These migration patterns greatly intensify after the pandemic and are much stronger for high earners. Top tax rates fell 5.2 percentage points for high earners who stayed with the same employer but switched states in 2020. Finally, we show that employers treat distant employees as a more flexible margin of adjustment.
To read the paper, click here
To read the slides, click here
WATCH THE SEMINAR
Topic: The New Geography of Labor Markets
Start Time: June 4, 2025, 12:00 PM PT
