Lifestyle home but city job for many regional buyers and renters
Tree and sea changers are keeping their metro jobs, preferring to work remotely for city bosses, a new study has found.
Residz Team 3 min read
The pandemic saw regional Australia as the big winner in luring home buyers and renters away from the severely unaffordable capital cities. However, a Melbourne University survey finds that as demographics of regional Victoria are changing, highly-qualified high earners who moved there are keeping their metro jobs rather than working for regional bosses.
Pressure on house prices and regional rents
These regional migrants are helping to push regional rental vacancies down to 0-1% and driving local house prices up. CoreLogic data in early 2022 showed median dwelling prices across Australia's combined regional markets were up more than 26% per cent in 12 months compared with capital city price rises of 21%.
Percentage of employed migrants went up
Opportunities to work remotely while keeping a metro job is seeing a younger cohort of workers continuing to choose to move to more affordable and relaxed lifestyle areas of the state.
Before the pandemic 81% of those who made a ‘flee-change’ and moved into the regions were employed. The report The Great Migration: Leaving our cities for the regions by Dr Peter Ghin and Professor Susan Ainsworth found that post-pandemic this lifted 14% to 95%. Around 65% work for metro bosses.
Percentage of metro-employed couples nearly triples
Before the pandemic only 12% of households had both partners working for an organisation based in the city. After the pandemic this number almost tripled to 34%. Of those employees who took part in the survey, less than a quarter were looking for work within their regional area.
Higher income employees more likely to be working remotely
The survey found there was ‘strong association between remote working, income, and education, with degree qualified people and those in higher income categories more likely to be working remotely.’ One in five (21%) believed their job could be done entirely remotely. More than half of the survey respondents ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘somewhat agreed’ they were reconsidering their job or career direction as a result of their regional relocation.
Move to region saved 4.5 hours commuting time
Over a quarter (27%) of new arrivals to regional Victoria were still commuting to the city for work. Overall, 55% of workers reported less time spent commuting, 30% reported an increase in their commute (although only marginally for most people), and 15% of respondents reported that there had been no change to their commuting experience. On average, the move to regional Victoria had saved workers 4.5 hours p/w in commuting time, and 31% of respondents strongly agreed that they would like to end their metro-regional commute to work.
Workers imagine a future working mostly from home
It seems future employers will have to embrace flexibility well into the future. Metro-based workers living regionally ‘strongly agreed’ that, moving forward, they’d prefer working remotely 2-3 days per week. There was less appetite for working just one day a week at home, and almost no appeal (5%) for returning to pre-Covid arrangements.
Summary
There were many home living trends that caught us by surprise during the pandemic. An overnight digital transformation of the workplace fuelled the Great Migration or Great Resignation. This Future of Work survey shows how city workers are largely keeping their metro jobs while living regionally, and hoping their employers don’t need them back in the office any time soon.