What to Make of That News About Graduates Staying in Their Hometowns

What is it? The number of graduates moving for a job has almost halved since 2001, from 1.8 percent to 1.0 percent, which obviously does not sound like much, but it is, like, thousands of people;
Where is it? Well it's everywhere around the UK, really, but as the traditional path has always been "A-Levels —> university —> move home for a bit with your mum and her new ex-copper boyfriend ('Don't call him a boyfriend, for god's sake,' your mum says, 'I'm 47 years old. He's just a… friend… who… is a… man. Anyway he wants you to start paying rent.') —> try for three months to get a job in your hometown but the only jobs are "call centre", "anodyne office" and "factory", all of whom eye you with suspicion for having a degree and still being here, the degree they promised would make you a success actively standing in the way of your immediate employment, somehow —> work at one of those for a bit and get into a horrible cyclical routine where you work from 9–5 without any joy and, to counteract the lack of joy in your life, get pissed with your mates three to four nights a week in the same pub you used to go to when you were 17, so that despite working 40-hour weeks and having slim-to-no costs because your mum had a word with Brian and she's said you don't have to pay rent until you're up and on your feet and she cooks all your dinners for you anyway, despite all that, despite your actual outgoings being nil, you always still end up at the bottom of your overdraft every month and you are miserable in doing it, which really starts making you question the point of, well, anything —> win £200 on a scratchcard and deck it all on a train to London to make your fortune —> fail. So because of all that, the "graduates not moving to find jobs" news has an adverse effect on London, our largest and most terrible city;
What is there to do locally? At this point the format-from-another-franchise joke really is starting to get tedious—
Alright, how much are they asking? Yeah see that bit just absolutely does not work at all;

The Resolution Foundation, here, with a bit of news: the proportion of graduates moving for a job each year has almost halved since 2001, dipping from 1.8 percent to 1.0 percent. The number of under-35s moving regions and changing jobs has also dropped 20 percent in the same period of time, and graduates themselves have more than doubled in the same time period, so all-in-all the latest study suggests the net number of graduates moving to London could be up to ten times lower than it was in the 1990s, when the Spice Girls were a thing and everything cost £1.

Here's the quote the think-tank is going with:

There are a few ways to see this: one is the positive, in that there are more skilled jobs distributed around the country instead of all being focused in London, so graduates don't need to move to the capital to find the work they want to do: OK. But with the Resolution Foundation finding the moving-to-London decline has been in line with an increase in the number of graduates in non-graduate jobs, it looks like young people, as per usual, are caught in some horrible catch-22 – no graduate jobs near them, and they can't afford to move to go and get graduate jobs, so honestly what is the point in being a graduate at all.

This is bad for individuals looking for purpose, as well as the economy as a whole: as RF finds, the average annual pay rise for people moving jobs but staying in the same region is five times higher than those who stay rigidly at the same employer: moving regions – say, to a big city or somewhere with a specialised industry – gives even more reward. But essentially, the country is stacked against us: there is a nationwide dearth of affordable housing, there isn't enough infrastructure for anything beyond certain long commute times being viable, and generations-old regional inequality works against talented young people from overlooked areas in the UK. You can read more here but it's a real downer. I know I say this a lot, but: it really does suck a dick to be a millennial, to be born in this era of doom.

Should you move to London? God, I don't know. It's a city where people are pathologically uncomfortable with the idea of sitting next to one another on the bus and where grey rain happens 200 days of the year. Grey rain happens everywhere in the UK, I acknowledge that, but there is something somehow super-depressing in the rain, in London, of skidding down iron stairs towards the underground, shaking off umbrellas and macintoshes in the dry stench of the air down there, slipping around in the half-mud of 8.7 million people's shoe-sole grime, wadded up with discarded copies of the Evening Standard. What is there to do after that? Go home to the flat you share with six other people and try to make beans on toast while four others try to make their dinner too. Go to the lounge where the girl upstairs' boyfriend – who has not left your house for six weeks, and won't make eye contact with you ever, and takes 45 minute showers and that housewide email you sent about sharing the bills payment seven ways got roundly ignored, and is called Ben – Ben is taking up an entire sofa with his legs and watching European domestic football. It is 8PM and your hair is wet. You pay £700 a month for this.

Was it ever so bad, living at home, with mum and Brian? When they went away for their naughty weekends you basically had the house to yourself. I mean, yes, the work was demoralising, but at least you had some space. Here, all you have is an oil heater in your room, half a bag of IKEA candles, a laundry airer that takes up most of your space and a bed that has collapsed, so you have to sleep on a mattress on the floor. Sit cross-legged in this small dry space that contains you. This is everything you have worked for and more. The temp agency says the office you've been at for eight months might want to make you perm but you'll have go to on probation again for three months, and is that OK with you. Yes, you say. It has to be. The news tells you millennials are killing everything with their resistance to spend money, and that means you. You are the problem, you are the blight. You, you are told, you existing and wanting to exist, is the country's biggest hardship right now. The country is dying because of you, dying dying dying. Look around you. 'Is—' you think, quietly, as the rain taps against your window, as you try to watch Netflix but the Wifi goes out again, and the loading screen circles in the dark, 'is everything not dead, already?'

@joelgolby