Remote work won’t save the heartland

Hopes persist that a burst of relocations by tech companies and remote workers will revitalize the American heartland. Maybe remote work and pandemic-spurred moves really are going to redistribute economic vitality more evenly across the country after a decade of excessive concentration in coastal “superstar” cities, or maybe not; while aspects of the corporate relocation story may be real, new evidence raises questions about the true potential of the remote-work-driven renewal storyline. An analysis on migration patterns reported that while the outflow of people from dense, high-cost urban metro areas accelerated in 2020, the flows were rather modest in most cases. What’s more is that most of the moves were short to moderate distances, often to nearby counties instead of the nation’s interior. Even modest gains like these could be eroded or outright eliminated by sustained outflows from the heartland and Mountain West to superstar metro areas, including workers who only moved temporarily and now are returning to the coasts. Attraction strategies seem like a long shot for the places most in need of growth as the pandemic eases and remote work declines, and regional leaders will need to continue making the kind of conscious, long-term investments that have long been the drivers of local economic growth and high standards of living.