Where I live (the Toronto area -- one of the continent's most expensive housing markets) there is an increasing trend of people using the pandemic as a justification or push to move outside of the city, to smaller and less expensive communities about 100-150 km away. This of course only works if you can WFH basically all the time (not an option for most scientists) but also assumes that the ability to WFH is going to be a permanent thing. I think many WFH people are in for a rude awakening in about a year's time. In the meantime, locals in the smaller communities are being priced out of their own towns by big-city money.
For scientists, the calculation is somewhat different. Not only will you usually not be WFH, but your employment, if you work in a company of at least moderate size, is likely to be in some kind of industrial district that is "far from everyone" and hard to get to -- unless you make a long-term bet on a particular employer by finding a home nearby. Industrial districts are also hard to serve with public transit, so you almost always have to drive. (The Alewife plans look like a nice exception.) I would expect that the COVID-related reduction in tolerance for long commutes, plus the isolation of industrial districts, will soon start to factor into decision-making when it comes to industrial R&D real-estate.
Salaries for industrial scientists may be too low to support long commutes, but I don't think anything will change until companies find it hard to hire specifically because of those commutes. That may happen soon in places like Boston and SF, but in other job markets where industry is less vigorous and yet there's still an ample supply of scientists, I don't see it happening anytime soon. In those places, there will still be plenty of people willing to commute 30-40 km each way to jobs paying not much higher than post-doc wages. It's all about supply and demand.
Insightful... thanks!
Also, loved the MMM (not 3M) reference :)
Lots of good stuff here, Tony.
Where I live (the Toronto area -- one of the continent's most expensive housing markets) there is an increasing trend of people using the pandemic as a justification or push to move outside of the city, to smaller and less expensive communities about 100-150 km away. This of course only works if you can WFH basically all the time (not an option for most scientists) but also assumes that the ability to WFH is going to be a permanent thing. I think many WFH people are in for a rude awakening in about a year's time. In the meantime, locals in the smaller communities are being priced out of their own towns by big-city money.
For scientists, the calculation is somewhat different. Not only will you usually not be WFH, but your employment, if you work in a company of at least moderate size, is likely to be in some kind of industrial district that is "far from everyone" and hard to get to -- unless you make a long-term bet on a particular employer by finding a home nearby. Industrial districts are also hard to serve with public transit, so you almost always have to drive. (The Alewife plans look like a nice exception.) I would expect that the COVID-related reduction in tolerance for long commutes, plus the isolation of industrial districts, will soon start to factor into decision-making when it comes to industrial R&D real-estate.
Salaries for industrial scientists may be too low to support long commutes, but I don't think anything will change until companies find it hard to hire specifically because of those commutes. That may happen soon in places like Boston and SF, but in other job markets where industry is less vigorous and yet there's still an ample supply of scientists, I don't see it happening anytime soon. In those places, there will still be plenty of people willing to commute 30-40 km each way to jobs paying not much higher than post-doc wages. It's all about supply and demand.