Go burbward, young knowledge worker

The pandemic has meant that white-collar workers can suddenly live anywhere. That will have implications for pay—how does a 20% salary cut sound?—and could reshape the U.S.

- By Noah Buhayar

Rachel Musiker was on maternity leave, stuck in a two-bedroom basement apartment with a newborn, when Covid-19 started spreading in New York City. Her husband, who works in the insurance industry, was still commuting on the subway, so she started making him shower before holding the baby. “It was just starting to feel unsafe to even go for walks,” Musiker says. So, on March 14, they packed a few bags and drove to Rochester, N.Y.

Musiker had loved her Brooklyn neighborhood. The rent was ridiculous, but there was a bistro a few steps from her apartment that served a fabulous brunch (if you were willing to wait for a table) and a day care a half-block away where she planned to send the baby. None of that mattered now. The day care might not even be open when she went back to work; brunch was a Before Times indulgence.

She and her husband had planned to stay with her parents for two weeks in Rochester. They ended up there for nine. Afterward they rented a house outside town on Lake Ontario, and Musiker settled back into her job as director of communications at the real estate and technology company Redfin Corp. In August the couple bought a four-bedroom, 3,400-square-foot house for $355,000.

There was a time when the thought of relocating to her hometown would have been something close to a nightmare for Musiker. But, to her pleasant surprise, Rochester wasn’t that bad. Her mom was helping with child care, it was easier to shop for groceries in a car, and there was a straight-out-of-Brooklyn craft brewery nearby. “It was a whole bunch of young people in a field at picnic tables drinking in the middle of the day,” she says. “We could picture it in Williamsburg.”