Job mobility

It was Norman Tebbit who encouraged the unemployed in the 1980s to get on their bikes to find work. In the 1960/70/80s it was not uncommon to move around the country as part of your career path. I moved my family 150 miles from Northamptonshire to Somerset when I changed jobs, and then moved them back again three years later. It was the accepted thing back then. In the retail sector, Marks and Spencer made a point of relocating their managers every three or four years, and often from one end of the country to the other. It was how one gained the necessary experience.

So much has changed since then. I would be very reluctant to uproot my family just for a job, when there is no longer such a thing as a job for life; or when loyalty to a particular firm is no longer held in esteem by the employer or considered a good career move by the employee. So what has changed?

Salaries for a start. Back in the mid 80s I was earning about £9k as a shop manager. I bought a house in a town close to where I worked for just over £23k.
Today I'd be lucky to earn 20k (if that), while the same house will now fetch over £130k. My wife was able to stay at home with our children until she found an evening job waitressing. It was (just)possible to manage on one salary.
A man with a young family just can't make that kind of move anymore, without also finding a job for his partner.
Then there is the regional differences in house prices. Kettering is historically one of the cheaper parts of Northamptonshire. A similar size house as ours in say, Northampton would cost £50k more to buy. The further south, the more expensive. This means that I could not afford to relocate any closer to London or the South East, so that means that I have to stay put. If I lived in Stoke (one of the poorest places in the country) there would be now way that we could afford to move to a more expensive area when wages have not kept pace with property prices.
I'd love to live in Cornwall, but house prices are more than double what they are where we live, and salries are much lower.
People are no longer as mobile as they were because of the imbalance between salaries and house prices.
And I fear it will get much worse.