Most of our discussion of labor mobility focused on skill specificity. Some recent research highlights one non-skill based source of immobility:
Home Ownership. It seems that across the advanced industrialized countries, unemployment rates are higher in communities in which a large proportion of the residents own their own homes than in communities in which residents rent. Because people own their homes, they find it difficult to move when they lose a job because it is difficult to sell the home. Hence,
home ownership reduces labor mobility.
Or does it?
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