Relocation & HR Trends

One of the most valuable tools within any given industry—regardless of which category or bucket you may fall into—is, hands down, historical data and research in your field.

Having this type of knowledge to look to and reference as you plan for the future is so incredibly powerful, and it allows your team to make more educated decisions both in the short-term and in the long-term.

Last year, we took a look at some of the states with the highest inbound and outbound spikes as it related to moving. But more importantly, we dove into exactly why it's so important to seek out information like this within your industry.

By making it a point to extract historical data on a regular basis and use the findings to help inform your own decisions, you're able to see the entire picture, as opposed to just one small piece of the pie. And, as we all know, without stepping back to look at the whole picture, you might be making decisions based on internal biases and opinions. 

This year, United Van Lines gathered the same data of top inbound and outbound states, and here's what the map looks like today:

(Use the dots to click through the years to see changes in inbound/outbound trends, dark blue representing high inbound and yellow representing high outbound.) 

Below are the top 10 inbound states from 2016: 

1. South Dakota
2. Vermont
3. Oregon
4. Idaho
5. South Carolina
6. Washington
7. District of Columbia
8. North Carolina
9. Nevada
10. Arizona

This is the first time in 3 years that Oregon hasn't held the top spot, and it's first time ever that South Dakota has held the top spot.

Michael Stoll, economist, professor and chair of the Department of Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles explains in the United Van Lines article:

“This year’s data clearly reflects retirees’ location preferences. We are seeing more retirees than ever decide to relocate, and as a result, new retirement hubs are popping up in Western states. Interestingly enough, these retirees are leaving at such a fast pace that the movement of millennials to urban areas in the Midwest and Northeast is being overshadowed.” 

On the other side of the coin, the top 10 outbound states from 2016 are as follows:

1. New Jersey
2. Illinois
3. New York
4. Connecticut
5. Kansas
6. Kentucky
7. West Virginia
8. Ohio
9. Utah
10. Pennsylvania

If you look at last year's data, you'll see that the rankings didn't change all that much. United explains that "Illinois (63 percent) moved up one spot on the outbound list, to no. 2, ranking in the top five for the last eight years. New additions to the 2016 top outbound list include Kentucky (58 percent), Utah (56 percent) and Pennsylvania (56 percent)."

So what do you do with this information?

If this data isn't relevant to you at this exact moment in time, be sure to save it with your other important trends and industry data so you can reference it as soon as you're ready to start planning for either office or employee relocations.  

It is so useful to have knowledge of where the masses are naturally relocating to, because it allows you to stay ahead of historical trends, and capitalize on what's to come instead.  

It's not hard to see that tech companies are popping up everywhere you look. A boom that began in popular cities like Chicago or San Francisco, has now expanded to take effect on cities and states not just across the country, but across the entire world.

In fact, 5 out of 7 of the world's most valuable companies are...you guessed it... technology companies. So that begs the question: Where are the best jobs and most sought after opportunities for those looking in tech?

Abodo recently put out a study with data on the best cities for tech jobs—primarily focusing on things like where can a person afford to live, find a job in tech, and get paid well.

The methodology was as follows:

"We used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on employment per 1,000 jobs and median annual wages for all mathematics and computer occupations by metropolitan statistical area and paired it with ABODO data on median 1-bedroom rent prices. To calculate the income-to-rent ratio for each MSA, we divided the median annual wages by 12 to get a median monthly wage, then divided the result by the current median 1-bedroom rent price for the area. We then scaled both the employment per 1,000 jobs and the income-to-rent ratio to give each a relative value between 0 and 10. The final score is a weighted sum of the scaled values, with employment per 1,000 jobs carrying a 75% weight and income-to-rent ratio 25%."

In analyzing 76 metropolitan statistical areas for computer and math job density, median salary in those positions, and median 1-bedroom rent price, here are some of the results:

Breaking this information down a bit, you can see that Computer and Math workers in Detroit–Dearborn–Livonia earn 12 times more in income than they’re paying in rent.

Closely behind is Toledo with people earning about 10 times more, and then lastly Tucson, Columbus, Bakersfield, Albuquerque, Wichita, and Cleveland–Elyria coming at 9 times what they’re paying in rent. (See the full data set here)

As we all know, data isn't much help without the proper analysis behind it. In short—how can you actually use any of this information to help make decisions?

Well, first, having information like this is important when determining things like where to open new office locations, or where to start sourcing talent from if you're opening new jobs. If you have a Millennial-heavy office population, but want to open an office in a city where rent is high and barely makes for an affordable lifestyle when looking at average salaries, you might be met with some hesitation and pushback. 

However, if you're prepared to offer higher salaries in order to be in a tech hub (especially on the coasts), then data like this gives you some insight into where you should start, and how you can position the opportunity to give recruiting teams the best offer-to-acceptance ratio. 

It's critical to, at minimum, keep yourself educated on trends and information like this. Even if you can't necessarily act on it, being able to at least speak to it and keep in mind as you grow your company allows for you to stay relevant in the workforce—especially against competitors.  

When one company decides to enter into a relationship with another—regardless of how small that partnership might be—it’s important to ensure that both are agreeing to something mutually beneficial and equally productive for each party.

In order to uncover these answers, there are three questions that you need to ask yourself and your team.

1. Are we on the same page with this potential partner?

2. Do their goals and mission align with ours?

3. Are we speaking the same language?

If you can confidently answer "yes" to these questions, then you're on the right track. And while the first two questions probably sound familiar (and maybe even a little obvious), the third might be one you haven't heard before, and it's a question many of us don't consider often enough. 

Are we speaking the same language? 

Businesses that share similar in a mindset—especially when that mindset is aligned in regard to levels of urgency and responsiveness—know how to work together in order to get the engine up and moving in the most efficient way possible. That window of time becomes smaller and smaller (in a good way) when communication across companies is done similarly to how communication is done internally. Companies within a similar industry are exposed to the same words and phrases, they experience similar roadblocks and challenges, and their overall mission and goals are generally aligned with one another. 

Let's take tech companies for example.

When one tech company chooses to partner with another tech company, the relationship is—by nature—fundamentally easier to manage. This is true first and foremost because each are built upon the same structure, sharing a similar mindset in their understanding for how that structure scales. They likely use (or are at least familiar with) the same tech solutions, they speak with the same industry jargon (often incorporating those concepts into their strategy), and they don't have to spend time getting on the same page—they start on the same page.

This allows the ramp-up time to decrease, and the time spent identifying goals, expectations, and a detailed plan for how to get there, to significantly increase.

Whether someone is an Account Manager, a Marketing Coordinator, a Relocation Consultant, or a Product Engineer—everyone is working under the same circumstances and in a similar environment. Sure, two companies might categorize themselves in a different genre or focus on a different core competency, but within the tech industry at large, there is unison in the shared preferences of those in the community.  

Think of it this way: two tech companies probably aren’t going to spend 8 months going back and forth redlining a 20-page contract via fax—their outlook on how they choose to define efficiency is simply different than that, and it's something that goes beyond just internal preferences. 

Put simply, there’s a level of camaraderie among companies working within the same industry, and it should be leveraged in order to work faster, communicate easier, and yield results that shatter our expectations.