Michael Stoll has released a new U.S. 2010 research brief entitled "Great Recession Spurs a Shift to Local Moves." Here is the executive summary:

Americans are very mobile. Over the last three decades the percent of Americans who moved in a given year was always more than 10%. But mobility has been declining in this period. More telling, in the last decade and especially in the years just before and during the Great Recession, there was a consistent decline in long-range migrations and a rise in local moves. This report shows several ways in which the Great Recession was implicated in these trends.

Because the recession was nation-wide, it shut off the lure of “better job pastures” elsewhere. It officially dates from 2008 to 2010 but its impacts began sooner and lasted longer. Its key characteristics were an exploding housing “bubble” that led to a collapsed housing industry that spiked unemployment, which in turn led to more foreclosures and put great pressure on financial institutions. The Great Recession hurt, to varying degrees, all regions of the country. People seeking better jobs (or even jobs) could not simply move West, South, East or North.

More from RSF's U.S. 2010 Project
• Unauthorized Immigrant Parents: Do Their Migration Histories Limit Their Children's Education?
• An Uneven Road and Then a Cliff: US Labor Markets since 2000
• Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America
• How Changes in Employment, Earnings and Public Transfers Make the First Two Years of the Great Recession (2007-2009) Different from Previous Recessions and Why It Matters

The Great Recession forced more people to move locally. People moved the most in metropolitan areas with the highest unemployment, the highest foreclosures – particularly the West and South, areas hard hit by the Great Recession. People who lost their jobs and/or their homes moved locally, to someplace cheaper. Unlike the past decades, when local movers were moving up economically – from an apartment to a house, from one house to a better one – these movers were moving down economically, seeking a cheaper home.

Black residents were particularly vulnerable. Not only did more black residents, proportionally, lose jobs, those losses were more likely to force black residents to move. Similarly, ore black homeowners, proportionally, entered foreclosure, and they were more likely to end up moving than foreclosed whites.

The research brief can be read and downloaded below. Launched in 2009 with a grant of over $1.2 million to Professor John Logan of Brown University, the U.S. 2010 project is an investigation of the subtle shifts and long-term trends in American life and an analysis of what these developments may mean for the future. You can learn more about the initiative here.

Research Brief: Great Recession Spurs Shift to Local Moves by Russell Sage Foundation