The Untold Stories of Labor Displacement

Texas showed the largest number of movers in one-way U-Haul® equipment in 2023 for the third year in a row. Courtesy of U-Haul

Commentary

The following are cases about which I know:

• A journalist who worked for the mainstream media fired in a political purge
• A professor who refused the vaccine and gave up his job
• A nurse who was furloughed and later injured by a vaccine she took to go back to work
• A young professional who left the city to get away from crime
• A doctor who was driven out of the profession because he prescribed banned antivirals
• A successful businessman whose company was wrecked by supply chain breakages

These are all stories of terrible life disruption over four years. There are millions of them. The demographic movements of the U.S. population—away from coastal cities to the South—reveal the fullness of it. Within those large trends are countless stories of sadness, despair, sickness, and also triumph. But they are real stories and largely ignored.