If you’re like me these days, you’re reading more book reviews than actual books — it’s cheaper and much, much quicker.
But I recently came across a book that might get me to reading, and it might interest those in the relocation/moving industry as well: “Next Stop Reloville” by Peter Kilborn.
Kilborn documents (lionizes?) a community of workers in the country for whom relocation is just another part of the job — here today, Detroit tomorrow.
They follow the job opportunities where they are, using the relocations to command a premium for their efforts, and often moving up steadily on the corporate ladder.
What’s so interesting to me about the book is its topicality, but not for the reasons you might suspect. It seems more history book than current social commentary. The way of the relocation specialist might be going the way of the dodo bird (and eventually Twitter, one might hope).
Companies are really backing out of the relo game — it’s expensive to relocate someone, even though many companies have moved away from handling all the aspects of the relocation themselves and instead just give the employees the lump sums to move themselves.
Even so, by all appearances, fewer employees are being relocated, for the obvious reasons –why would you need to relocate a skilled employee when there might so many eligible candidates in your own community?
People will still need to keep moving, but it’s doubtful that this class of road warrior will be the prominent variety, and those who are overly dependent on them should plan accordingly.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Moving, Relocation, Relocation Data.
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