Census Statistical Change, Not Recession Or Negative Equity, Made Americans Look Less Mobile

From The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, "A sharp drop in interstate migration? Not really" by Greg Kaplan and Sam Schulhofer-Wohl, April 2011:

Many policymakers have expressed concern that unemployment remains high, in part, because the once highly mobile American worker has suddenly become unable or unwilling to move across the country for a job. This paper shows that this concern is unnecessary:***In 2006, the [Census] bureau changed the way it calculates.... This change in methods—not any actual change in migration patterns—turns out to be responsible for much of the recent decline in reported migration rates. The change explains 90 percent of the reported decrease in interstate migration between 2005 and 2006, and 42 percent of the decrease between 2000 (the recent high-water mark) and 2010.

Read the entire article here.