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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Here's a question for you, listeners. Have you been feeling stuck recently? Specifically, would you like to move, but you can't? Maybe you're in a job you don't love, and you want to move to take one in another city, but the housing market is blocking you, or maybe your family outgrew your apartment one or two kids ago. Yes, you know who you are.

Are you supposed to be an empty nester, but your recent college grad hasn't found an affordable place of their own to live? Well, you are far from alone. Listen to this headline from The Wall Street Journal. I'm going to talk to their reporter. "Nobody's buying homes, nobody's switching jobs, and America's mobility is stalling." With me now is one of the reporters of that article, Rachel Louise Ensign. Rachel, welcome to WNYC.

Rachel Louise Ensign: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help us report this particular affordability story. Would you like to move, but you can't? Tell us your story. 212-433-WNYC. Maybe you're in a job you don't love, and you want to move to take one in another city, but the housing market even there, even if it's not New York, is blocking you or because it's hard to sell, or maybe your family outgrew your apartment one or two kids ago, or you're supposed to be an empty nester, but your recent college grad hasn't found an affordable place of their own to live. Whatever your story is, call and tell it. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Rachel, give us more on your headline. What do you mean when you write, "America's mobility is stalling," beyond what I already?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Well, a lot of data shows that people are moving to new homes and new cities at around the lowest rate on record. On the hiring front, you see something pretty similar where companies aren't laying that many people off, but they're also not really hiring either. A lot of workers are aware of that, and they're just clinging to the job that they have because they are worried about finding a new one if they left.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take an example from your article, a young adult example, a recent college grad, Josue Leon. What's he going through, and what does his story say about his cohort's experience with the American economy right now?

Rachel Louise Ensign: This young man is a recent graduate from the University of Pennsylvania. He got an engineering degree. That's something that should be extremely marketable. He applied for over 200 jobs and did not get a lot of responses. He did eventually get one offer. This is a young man who, after graduation, was living in Texas, but the offer was in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts is just so expensive. Housing costs are so high that he didn't feel like he could take that entry-level job and afford to move there to get set up in a home. He kept looking. Eventually, he did find something locally, but it took a really long time for this young man, who you would think would be extremely marketable to find something. He really felt like he could only stay somewhere that had a somewhat lower cost of living because of how expensive certain parts of this country are now.

Brian Lehrer: Where does that story fit into the history of America? That's your larger context here, that something that was very American has changed, right?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, exactly. Mobility is a uniquely American thing. A lot of economists think that mobility is intertwined with the economic dynamism of our country. There's a big economic boom somewhere, and Americans will pick up and move for jobs. That's good for the companies looking for workers. That's good for workers. They make more money in this new place that they move. This really big decline in all sorts of mobility is something that's really concerning, just given that this has been such a hallmark of our country for decades and decades.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another kind of example. You talked to two families for your article in The Wall Street Journal, who have outgrown their homes as they have had kids. Tell us one of those stories.

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, so there is a family in this story. There's this big overarching number on share of Americans who are moving. That number is around a record low. It's really declined a lot recently. You can see within it what's driving that because they ask you, "If you do move, why are you moving?" The main reason why fewer people are moving is it's clearly because housing is so expensive now.

There are so many Americans who have 3% mortgages or maybe even below 3%. Even though they would like to move, maybe they have some more kids, their home is feeling a little tight, or even older people, they want to downsize, financially, it just doesn't work because you would have to give up your 3% mortgage. Homes are a lot more expensive now. Not only a higher mortgage rate, but the price of the home is higher, and it just doesn't make sense.

Folks are sticking with what they have. You also have people in New York in particular, maybe they have a rent-stabilized home and apartment. They can't leave it because it's $2,000, and the comparable apartment is on the market for $7,000. Pretty much, housing costs have gone up so much that people are just hanging on to whatever reasonable housing situation that they have.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I used to live next door in a Manhattan building to a family that had a rent-stabilized apartment. It was one bedroom, and they raised three kids in that one-bedroom apartment. Both parents work, but they were of modest means. They kept their one-bedroom apartment through the entire childhoods of their three kids. That's, of course, the unaffordability of New York in general, but it's also the kind of situation that you were referring to, either from having rent stabilization or from having a low mortgage rate, if you need to sell and buy, mortgage rates are much higher these days. What you call "golden handcuffs." That's the phrase, right?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, exactly. On one hand, owning a property and having a great mortgage rate is a good thing to have. At the same time, there's a level of dissatisfaction that you have with this home that is cheap, but it's not exactly where you would like to be living now. Similarly, a lot of white-collar jobs gave people great salaries, great stock perks and benefits after the pandemic. A lot of people feel like they really can't leave those right now because there's nothing comparable on offer.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text from a listener who has another category to raise. Listener writes, "Overhoused retired people." It says retired couples, but it could be individuals as well. "Overhoused," that's an interesting word. "Retired couples do not sell because of the high capital gains taxes." You aware of this at The Wall Street Journal?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, we did a whole story about it last year, actually, about how boomers actually own more of the homes that have three-plus bedrooms in this country than millennials with children. That is definitely a factor. We heard from a lot of readers afterwards that that's part of why they don't want to sell. There are a number of reasons why boomers are sticking around in the big homes that they raise their kids in, but that is certainly one of them, that a lot of them would have to pay a big capital gains tax if they sell.

Brian Lehrer: For families with kids, I think a particularly New York City angle, I think, but you tell me if this is also a national angle, is that there are very few families in New York City, from what I've read, who have three children.

Rachel Louise Ensign: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, there's the general trend in the country to not have three children, to have one or two more commonly. Those who do want to have three, they're not staying in the city even if they started out in the city with their first or second child, right?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, The Times actually did a story a few days ago on what it takes to have three kids in New York City. I have little kids myself, and it's very, very expensive, whether it's child care up until you can get into that 3K, pre-K situation, or housing, too. The cost of a three-bedroom apartment in New York City, whether it's to rent or to buy, is extraordinarily high. I think to do that comfortably, you really do have to earn a lot. There are a good number of New Yorkers who do, but it's definitely not the majority of people.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a New York City resident. Scott at Long Island City, Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hey, Brian, how are you? Big fan.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Scott: Question. The one thing I notice every year is that property tax never stops rising. The city gets most of its money from property tax. Once property taxes go up, the landlords just pass them on to everybody else. Is there a solution in the works to stop the tax increase, which then gets passed on to everybody else in the city? Also, as far as rent-stabilized apartments go, there's 50,000 of them that are offline, because the state legislature passed laws to make it impossible for apartments that need renovations to be brought back online, because they're still frozen at $900 rents when tenants finally leave those units after 30 years. This sounds more like a state problem overall. The politicians talk about affordability, but they're the ones that are causing the problem. I'd like to get the thoughts on that. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Scott, thank you very much. He's got that particular New York angle, but I think he also implies a national question with property taxes. Certainly, we talk about it so much in New Jersey. New York has its different property tax debate going on right now, but where does this come in nationally, according to your reporting?

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes, I am not an expert on New York State property taxes or how the stabilization law changes have affected affordability and all of that. One thing I could point to, which is something we talked about in this story, is that there are a lot of economists who think the shortage of housing and different regulations that make housing hard to build has really weighed on mobility.

I spoke to an economist in this piece who found that expensive housing dissuaded so many people for moving for better jobs that it actually weighed on the national GDP. There are a lot of people who think the evidence is pretty clear that, basically, a housing shortage is a huge part of this lack of mobility, and that it's so significant, it's weighing on the national economy.

Brian Lehrer: Here's one more text from a listener with a New York experience. "We keep having to move out of houses we have loved due to gentrification in our hoods. Williamsburg, upper Bed-Stuy, now lower Bed-Stuy, where rent has tripled, but our income hasn't changed. Meanwhile, I've had two kids, and my housing is shrinking, but the cost and my kids are growing, but there's no way we could move. We are maxed out. Rents are more money than we make."

Give us, as we run out of time, the national implications as you see it, as your sources for this article have described it or warned. You wrote, "Economists worry the phenomenon of the lowest number of people moving to new homes and new cities is putting some of the country's trademark dynamism at risk." What does that mean? Then we're out of time.

Rachel Louise Ensign: Yes. Well, I think what that means is that it's good for the economy for people to move to new homes and new cities. Economists seem to really agree on that. It's good for a company setting up shop in a city to be able to attract workers from across the country. It's good for workers to be able to move for a better job.

It's good for people like the listener who texted you to be able to find a new home that suits their family. The fact that that is stalling has all sorts of ramifications, including just for how people feel. Consumer sentiment is low. People feel like everything's really expensive, and it's only going to get more expensive. Even though, by a lot of measures, the economy is chugging along, this stuckness is a factor that really seeps into everything.

Brian Lehrer: Rachel Louise Ensign, economics reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who just wrote this very bracing piece on the decline of mobility, one of the signature aspects of life in America, and some things we might do about it. Thank you for joining us.

Rachel Louise Ensign: Thanks so much for having me.

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