A few generations back, the notion of traveling great distances to your job was quite foreign.  Without the national highway system and a car in every driveway, families lived near their jobs or worked downtown, commuting on trains or subways.  The expansion of commuting distances contributed to improvements in labor market mobility which helped fuel the growth of the American economy over the past 50 years.  For many, the rise of the car as the dominant means for commuting was also a boon to quality of life, since the car permanently severed any ties between where you live and work, ending generations of fealty to local employers.

Times have changed, however.  Company towns and sweat shops are gone.  Work for many is no longer location-dependent, to the point where the still infrequent use of telecommuting is impossible to defend.  Yet employers and families have taken their “locational” freedoms to extremes.  Both are increasingly found on the edge of suburbia, but rarely in proximity to each other.  Living close to work, of course, sullies the reassuring notion of faux country living.  The dispersion of jobs away from central Portland has been led by its largest employers, including Intel and Nike, which both have campuses on the western fringe of the metro area.  While this concentration of high paying jobs has produced corresponding growth in the local towns, if you want to work for the most prestigious companies in Portland, you will most likely have to traverse the metropolitan area by car.  Not to be outdone, a similar concentration of large employers has developed on the southern edge of suburbia.  So refusing to commute by car precludes employment at most of the area's largest companies.

A geographically-focused job search may seem like a luxury, but I actually believe it is a practical response to the disregard employers show for the burden of commuting born by their employees.  Commuting has a cost and suburban employers count on job seekers to ignore these costs when weighing job offers.  In certain job markets, employees may be gaining the upper hand against suburban employers.  Cities like Portland are experiencing an influx of “creative class” types with a distaste for the suburbs, and downtown firms, as a result, are beginning to have an edge in recruiting professionals.   The competitive disadvantages of the suburbs in this case include qualitative concerns like nightlife and proximity to other young professionals, but nonetheless the message is clear: if the rest of my life is in the city, why should I drive out to the suburbs everyday for work?

I’m not naïve enough to believe that these small victories in the battle against suburban job growth represent a groundswell of support for city-only job searches.  Until the bulk of the baby boomers begin to retire, and the labor force shrinks dramatically, suburban employers will be immune from any repercussions from their selfish location decisions.  I can live with that.  My job search is really about what’s best for me and my family.  That job search might take a little longer, but I’ll know the perfect job when I see it: it’s the one that keeps me out of the car and home in time for dinner.