Gold Rush: Why More Americans Want to Leave the U.S.

By Eric Reed

The appeal of a higher salary and better quality of life are luring younger adults to look for employment outside the U.S. (Photo: Stocksy)

Is America still the land of opportunity? An increasing number of people think the answer to that question might be no… and they’re ready to pack up and go.

According to data gathered by TransferWise, a global money transfer company, about a third of Americans say they would leave the U.S. to seek economic opportunity abroad. This snappily named “Anchor Index” found that the issue breaks down along unsurprising demographic lines. Most Millennials said that they would be perfectly happy to leave in search of “a better quality of life” elsewhere.

It’s surprising, especially for a nation that has prided itself as the destination for immigrants across the world. From calling for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” to today’s debate about walling off Mexico, Americans have always been sure of one thing: everyone wants to get here. Now, it seems, quite a few of us are ready to leave. By the numbers:

• 35% of Americans would consider leaving to live elsewhere

• 55% of Millennials would do so

• 14% would be willing to drop everything and go in the next five years

• 58% of Americans say that they’re mainly staying just for family or romantic ties

Your adventure awaits! (Photo: Stocksy)

For some people, the lure is about finding new places and having new experiences. Indeed, an entire cottage industry of travel blogs exists around this very idea of whistling around the world on a wing and a prayer. Young people in particular are drawn to this, in what Joe Cross, general manager for TransferWise USA, called “a very Millennial mindset.”

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But… wanderlust doesn’t account for all of it, or even most. The number one reason people said they would leave the United States is to seek a better quality of life or higher salary than they can find here.

The survey picks at what has been an increasingly common theme of the economy since the Great Recession, particularly among the young. It’s impossible to miss the growing sense that this economy fails to serve the Americans in it. Despite the increasingly cheerful numbers that come out of macroeconomic reports, the reality is that most people don’t feel that their lives are getting any better.

The statistics might be improving, but the anecdotes stubbornly remain the same: more stress, longer hours, and meager incomes. For young people, the burden is doubled by debt and the impression of an elder generation that seems stubbornly intent on dying at the desk.

Again it’s an area where the data wars with instinct.

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Economists have a hard time figuring out just how much delayed retirement of the Boomers actually impacts Generation Y, now up and coming and ready to start moving into offices of their own. Ask recent graduates, however, and they’ll be ready with stories of minted Ph.D. candidates with no professorships to fill and would-be managers waiting out the clock on their current boss.

So it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise that eventually people have begun to ask themselves, “Could it be better somewhere else?”

Of course as Cross pointed out, this is still at odds with the way the rest of the world sees us.

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Is working abroad a better option for you? (Photo: Stocksy)

Younger people “think that maybe there’s a better life outside of the United States,” he said. “As a non-American, a lot of people look at America as the country that it’s hard to get into, and a lot of the people that have made it are very lucky. There’s this sense that the American dream still exists for non-Americans, so it was fascinating to see that so many people in the country are starting to think that maybe there’s a better life out of America.”

For most Americans, “overseas” might be even be stretching it. According to World Bank data, the majority of emigres from the U.S. go to either Mexico or Canada. We don’t tend to send much money home either, a measly $5 billion a year compared with the $120 billion that immigrants to America send to their families outside of the country annually.

It’s a balance that might question whether would-be emigres are actually right about the booming opportunities elsewhere. Or, perhaps it just means that they’re settling down to a new home.

Still, there is something happening with America. Worldwide, according to research firm InterNations, only 9% of expats move abroad seeking “a better quality of life” compared with over a third of Americans who say they would do so. Roughly 40% of Millennials would seek job opportunities and higher salaries abroad, comparable to existing expats from countries like Greece and Italy, who move abroad for the same reasons (30% and 24% of expats from those countries, respectively).

Interestingly enough, noted InterNations spokeswoman Victoria Borisch in an email, emigration from the U.S. and the European Union is way up in 2015. It “noticeably peaked over the course of the past year in January 2015,“ she said. The number of expats leaving both the U.S. and E.U. for other destinations tripled between December 2014 and January 2015.

Comparing the people who would leave a country with those who already have is, of course, a dicey business, but it’s useful as a way of measuring how people are feeling at a given moment. Work and economic opportunity dominate the discussion for U.S. would-be expats, the same way that it does people who have actually made the move from troubled countries.

The bigger question is how real all of this is. One of the truths of modern travel is that technology has increasingly smoothed the hardship out of journeys around the world. Once inaccessible mountain fortresses have five star restaurants attached, and vacationers pretending to be Indiana Jones can have their Raiders moment spoiled by an ill-timed call from their mother.

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Technology has made keeping in touch with loved ones and friends easy (Photo: Stocksy)

Moving overseas no longer comes with the difficult separation that it did even 50 years ago, now that Skype makes catching up with the relatives free and easy and airfare is something you save up for a couple of months.

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Perhaps, then, this is just an easy fantasy acting as the escape valve for youthful pressure. We all are looking overseas and wondering “what if,” and in particular a millennial generation that’s growing impatient for its turn to come.

“I do think it’s one of those things where perhaps it isn’t fundamentally true,” Cross said. “It’s a perceptions thing. There’s the perception that the grass is greener, there is something for me out there and I think that plays into this idea of having new experiences and seeing the world… What this survey reveals is more than anybody imagined is that people are willing to take that punt.”

On the other hand, maybe this survey is telling us something more important.

An enormous number of our fellow citizens say they would pick up and go to find something better somewhere else. It’s easy to tell them love it or leave it, but what does it mean when a serious number of people are willing to do both?

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